The annals of science are stuffed full of stories about researchers who were trying to achieve one thing and ended up accomplishing something entirely different. Fortunately for both scientists and science writers, the serendipitous find is a cliché that manages to retain its fascination no matter how many repetitions it goes through. That fascination arises from a fundamental truth about science: the more we think we understand, the more there is to know.

Nowhere is this more true than in the field of neuroscience. Over the past few decades, scientists have made great strides in teasing apart the workings of the brain’s structures on a micro level. We now know, to an astonishing degree of detail, how neuronal cell bodies direct basic functions such as breathing, walking, and other motor functions. We can diagram, model, and even predict how the long, thread-like axons projecting from each brain cell carry electrical impulses from one neuron to another. Yet our fundamental grasp of how the brain’s signals operate on a larger scale—how they interact with each other to create the web of ideas and feelings we call experience—is much less robust. Recently, for instance, two separate teams of researchers were testing a technique called deep brain stimulation to treat obesity on the one hand and Parkinson’s on the other. In the process, both teams made discoveries about the nature of memory and personality.

The phrase “deep brain stimulation” can’t help but sound bizarrely risqué, like some kind of sexy, subversive cerebral activity that’s intended to lead to a throbbing intellectual orgasm. The reality of this increasingly common medical procedure can be almost as difficult to wrap your mind around. The therapy involves a neurosurgeon tucking a tiny electrode deep into a particular location within the spongy, yielding tissue of your brain. Once it has been activated, the implant faithfully delivers a brief but intense pulse of electricity to the surrounding tissue, in regular intervals, for as long as it continues to reside there. The treatment has been described by more than one scientist as being a little bit like a “pacemaker for the brain.” Early forms of deep brain stimulation have been around since the 1960s, and the therapy is now used to treat everything from chronic pain to the startling verbal outbursts caused by Tourette’s syndrome.

Researchers have found that short, controlled stimulation of the brain tissue around the electrode can correct for the irregular or dysfunctional signals that are thought to be responsible for symptoms like the chronic muscle tremors and stiffness associated with Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis. But the regular pulsations emitted by these hair-thin electrodes don’t just combat physical manifestations of disease. They seem to be effective in dealing with certain types of emotional and cognitive maladies, too. Some clinically depressed subjects, for whom the heavy veil of melancholy seemed impossible to lift, reported feeling lighter almost immediately after the current was turned on in their implants. The procedure has even helped to quiet the irresistible impulses experienced by patients with treatment-resistant obsessive compulsive disorder.

Despite its disquieting name, deep brain stimulation has proven to be a life-changing therapy for thousands of patients who suffer from otherwise intractable disorders. It’s also been an amazingly rich source of accidental discoveries about how the mind works.

One 2008 study conducted by a group of French psychiatrists, for example, found that some patients who had received years of deep brain stimulation treatments in order to control their Parkinson’s tremors became less able both to experience emotions such as motivation and interest, and to recognize emotions on human faces. These unintended effects of the therapy have helped to confirm that the the subthalamic nucleus of the brain is involved in regulating both motivation and facial emotion recognition.

In 2007, a team of Canadian physicians led by the Toronto Western Hospital’s Andres Lozano used deep brain stimulation on a patient who suffered from morbid obesity. The doctors hoped that receiving a session of deep brain stimulation would help to curb the patient’s appetite, as it had previously been shown to do in animals. Instead they found that the therapy caused the man, who was 50 years old, to experience sudden, vivid recollections of events that had taken place decades ago. They succeeded, in other words, in altering the signals his brain cells were sending to each other—but they failed to entirely predict the kinds of messages these altered signals would end up communicating. While undergoing the treatment, the patient reported that he felt as if he were in the midst of a crowd of old friends, as well as an old girlfriend, in a park—the remembered scene bright with rich color and movement. In addition, longer periods of stimulation enabled the patient to perform better on tests of memory. Lozano’s team published their discovery in the January 2008 issue of the Annals of Neurology, and some scientists speculate that their work may eventually lead to what could be a powerful treatment for people with cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer’s, which cause memory loss.

That same year, scientists at the University of Arizona made an equally stunning discovery about the effects of brain stimulation on character. The team, led by psychologist Michael Frank, used a computer program that required the user to choose between “good” symbols (those that resulted in positive feedback 80% of the time) and “bad” ones (those that resulted in negative feedback 80% of the time) to study how how Parkinson’s patients who were receiving DBS made decisions. They found that patients being treated with DBS became far more impulsive than those on dopamine medications or healthy control. They couldn’t seem to stop themselves from choosing the bad symbol even when they knew it was likely to produce negative feedback. This impulsiveness was observed in more realistic situations as well. Wrote Frank of the first DBS patient in our study, who happened to be wheelchair-bound, that “when asked whether he might be more comfortable in a different chair situated across the room (he) immediately advanced toward that chair—ignoring the fact that he was not able to walk properly and was likely to fall.” What Frank and his colleagues believe is that by disrupting the electrical activity in an area of the brain known as the subthalamic nucleus, DBS effectively prevents people from taking their time when confronted with two conflicting options for how to behave.

Perhaps what’s most fascinating about both these findings is how directly and reliably the researchers were able to manipulate the experiences their patients were having. In the case of Lozano’s patient, the more current was used in the stimulation, the more details he was able to recall from his happy memory. In the case of the Parkinson’s patients, when the stimulation was removed, their cool-headed decision-making powers seemed instantly to return. Although it may seem presumptuous to interfere in such a direct and palpable way with the brain signals that control our thoughts, memories, and emotions, it’s worth remembering that the medications many of us take without much thought—and the meditation sessions many use to calm their thoughts—have precisely the same intent. The tangled networks that direct our conscious and unconscious selves are oddly, wonderfully malleable—just like our ever-evolving ideas about the brain itself.

Poke around for more on Inkling about the surprising behavior of the brain.

Long before CPR or the appropriate application of defibrillators, medical experts were doing their damnedest to bring back the dead. In celebration of Inkling’s own revival, the approach of Halloween and—of course—our particular fondness for non-scientific science—we bring you a historical overview of these heroic, and often woefully misguided, pursuits. 

Throughout most of human history, any case of successful resuscitation was credited not to human ingenuity, but to divine intervention. No one but Death himself, it was thought, could relinquish his iron grip upon the dead. Despite this, human ingenuity flourished. We have a long and glorious history of shocking and offensive attempts to rile the dead back into annoyed animation. Poking needles into them, say. Or punching them in the face. (Both these resuscitation techniques were documented in ancient texts). Anyone unfortunate enough to lapse into deep unconsciousness in the Middle Ages might have been whipped repeatedly with stinging nettles by Good Samaritans hoping to flagellate him or her to life. 

Some ancient revivers took a rather obvious tack towards awakening the dead. Since dead bodies were cold bodies, it also came to be believed that the application of heat had the power to resuscitate. Hot ashes or even burning excrement (!) were sometimes heaped directly onto inert chests in an attempt to restore the warmth of the living from the outside. It may seem counter-intuitive to try to raise the dead with procedures that could well kill a person, but I suppose there is a sort of cheerful “No harm, no foul!” logic to these early tactics. After all, either you were definitively dead, in which case having your flesh singed wouldn’t harm you, or you still had some spark of life left in you, in which case even the most drastic measures would be worth it.

Some long-dead (ahem) methods of resuscitation were as much an assault on the late lamented’s dignity as anything else. This is especially true with the method of resuscitation known, distressingly, as “rectal fumigation with tobacco.” By the 18th century, it was known that tobacco was a powerful stimulant, and it was also believed that its capacity to arouse physiological or nervous system activity was especially potent in the intestines. As a result, one very common resuscitation technique involved filling a pair of bellows with tobacco smoke and puffing it into the victim’s rectum. Yes, you read that right. Dead people were forced to smoke through their rear-ends. So popular was this practice that it did not end until it was demonstrated that just a few ounces of tobacco introduced in this way would kill both dogs and cats—something which the brave British physiologist Benjamin Brodie thought to do in 1811.

There are reports from about the same time of such objects as corncobs and the beaks of ravens being used for the same violent purpose on stillborn newborns; the former seem uncomfortably large and the latter uncomfortably sharp, but perhaps I am clinging too closely to modern standards of care here. Other then-current neonatal resuscitation techniques included pinching, tickling, pulling on the tongue, swinging the baby upside down by the arms (with the cautionary note that slick birth fluids should be dried off first so as not to add to the unconscious baby’s troubles a swift journey through the air), and—notable for its simplicity—simply yelling loudly at the infant until it woke up and deigned to suck in some air. By the late nineteenth century, the startling mustard-up-the-nose method of reviving babies (popular a hundred years before) had gone out of style, but it was still common for physicians to use a nebulizer to create a fine mist of brandy in a breathing mask that was placed over the baby’s nose and mouth. Brandy for blue babies!

As anatomical science advanced, some resuscitation techniques at least took into consideration a basic understanding of the physiological principles behind respiration: In Europe and the United States at the beginning of the 19th century, drowning victims were frequently strapped onto the backs of horses, which were then sent trotting up and down the beach. It was hoped that the vigorous up-and-down motion of the horse’s back against the victim’s torso would cause the lungs to alternately compress and expand, forcing the return of airflow. Modern CPR techniques, though far less dramatic, are based on the same principle. In fact, the rate at which a horse typically canters—99 strides per minute—is very close to the currently recommended rate of 100 compressions per minute of CPR. Maybe they really did know what they were doing back then.

During the same period, Italian anatomist Luigi Galvani and his nephew Aldini began experimenting with the somewhat disreputable science of galvanism (using powerful electric currents to attempt to revive dead tissues into vitality), a deliciously grisly precursor to modern defibrillation techniques (it is Galvani to whom we owe the wonderful verb galvanize. Though their series of gruesome experiments on dogs, frogs, rabbits, oxes, and executed criminals never actually succeeded in raising the dead, the pair did titillate large audiences of aristocrats, scholars, and professionals with their demonstrations. Horror and delight mingle spookily in the testimony of one witness to the attempted resuscitation of a convicted murderer who had been hanged an hour previously: “The jaws of the deceased criminal began immediately to quiver; the adjoining muscles were contorted most horribly and one eye actually opened!”

Alarming and undignified as they may seem to us today, there’s something comforting about the inventiveness of these artifacts of the history of resuscitation. After all, there’s nothing dignified about death itself: it’s messy, cruel, and often degrading. We’re lucky to be living in the age of CPR, automated external defibrillators, and epinephrine shots, but even these tools of modern science only push death away a small fraction of the time. It’s a solace, in the face of that fact, to look back and know that truly—we’ve tried everything else.

For more morbid musings, check out Anna’s Death Map post.

Whether at work or at home, we all experience the effects of stress, rarely heeding its red flags. The anxiety, the loss of appetite, the insomnia—most of us dismiss stress as little more than a psychological irritant, an ephemeral feeling that can knock us down; from which we can always bounce back.

But stress packs a heavier punch than we might think. Contrary to how we experience it, the physical effects of chronic stress go beyond the short term, and perhaps even beyond the long term. Because the latest research in stress physiology indicates that some effects of stress may not only last a lifetime, they could leak into your children and even their children—permanently.

While many stress physiologists examine stress in the lab, Dr. Rudy Boonstra, from the Centre for the Neurobiology of Stress at the University of Toronto, looks at stress in snowshoe hares in the forests of the Yukon. At first glance, snowshoe hares might seem like an odd choice for a stress research subject, but a closer look at their unusual life cycle indicates that these bunnies could be the poster-children for paranoia. These guys are seriously stressed out—pretty much all the time.

The Original Stress Bunny: Snowshoe Hares

“In the war between predators and prey, the snowshoe hares have lost,” Boonstra says flatly. “Animals under these conditions are making the best of a bad situation.”

Boonstra’s research opens a one-of-a-kind window into a mysterious mammalian life cycle that has puzzled biologists for years. Snowshoe hares go through a characteristic 10-year cycle, in which they happily pump out babies for a couple of years until the population peaks, and then die off for another four to five years until numbers start to creep up again.

Boonstra and his colleagues have spent years crossing off possible causes for the widespread crashes in snowshoe hare populations. So far, predation is the leading cause for why they crash, but the jury is still out for why populations can’t recuperate years down the line.  Chronic stress is now a tantalizing hypothesis to explain their inability to bounce back.

“We don’t know what causes it, but I suspect it’s that they’re suffering from the ‘ghosts of predators past,’” Boonstra says, explaining further: “Imagine that you are a mother, and you have a child, and that child for whatever reason…dies. You will not be the same individual the next year as you were before…In other words, the chronic stress of having to deal with that situation may cause irreversible changes in the way your hippocampus is organized, which then shapes you for the future.”

Boonstra points to the research of neurophysiologists like Bruce McEwen and Robert Sapolsky, who have studied how chronic stress can actually shrink the hippocampus, the brain’s centre for memory, learning, and the regulation of stress itself. Because of its unique receptivity to stress hormones, the hippocampus can end up battered by long-term hormone exposure, causing reversible neuronal changes over the course of weeks, and irreversible neuron loss over the course of months. And since the hippocampus controls how we respond to stress, these changes can compromise our ability to deal with stress in the future.  What Boonstra’s actually implying is that snowshoe hares’ brains could be so physically traumatized from the stress of predation that they just can’t calm down enough to raise healthy families later on.

Stress: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

But it doesn’t stop there—researchers are now looking into the inter-generational effects of stress in animal (and human) populations. In fact, the snowshoe hare cycle might be an extreme example of how stress can negatively impact future generations, by permanently modifying their expression of stress-associated genes.

Recent research by McGill psychobiologist Michael Meaney demonstrates that this kind of thing does in fact happen. In a surprisingly simple experiment, Meaney found that stressed-out mother rats who neglect their pups end up programming their babies to be stressed-out as adults. How? It turns out that Mom’s grooming and licking releases serotonin in pups’ brains, which triggers the expression and de-methylation of stress response-inhibiting genes. In other words, Mom’s nurturing not only turns on her babies’ calming genes, it programs her babies to be calmer permanently. Take away Mommy’s love, and you take away Baby’s ability to adapt to stress in the future.

Now researchers are wondering if the transfer of these kinds of permanent, epigenetic brain changes could account for poorer fitness in subsequent generations of snowshoe hares. “That’s one hypothesis, and until you actually test it, you can’t know for sure,” Boonstra admits. “But so far, it’s the most plausible one.”

The cycle of snowshoe hares, long cited as a classic example of predator-prey interactions in ecology textbooks, could soon come forth as an illuminating icon of what chronic stress is capable of in the natural world. And from it, scientists are realizing that stress is truly a force to be reckoned with, one that can affect us more than we’d like to admit. 

I’m no culinary wizard.  Scratch that, I’m a dud in the kitchen.  So my gastronomic deficiencies have allowed me to adopt a keen relish for dining out.  From the first bite of buttered bread to the last sip of a warm cappuccino, I swoon over menu selections, service and good company from across the table.

But on my way home, belly full and food coma a comin’, I think back to the restaurant I just left.  The gray sweet-smelling smoke heaves from the ovens while the air-conditioning coaxes a chill over my body.  The glass bottles strewn in garbage bins.  The polished, heavy silverware I grip in my fingers.  The paper napkin folded across my lap and the slick Styrofoam container I leave with.  It now seemed more like a crime scene.

Michael Oshman, Executive Director and Founder of the Green Restaurant Association (GRA), would agree.  In 1990 he set out to encourage the $558 billion restaurant industry, occupying 10% of the U.S. economy and crowned the number one consumer of electricity in the retail sector, to swing sustainable. 

Green Should be a Restaurant’s Golden Rule

There are approximately 945,000 restaurants across the U.S.  Each one typically produces an average of 100,000 pounds of trash, uses 500,000 kilowatt hours of electricity and 800,000 gallons of water in only one year.  All this contributes to the estimated 490 tons of carbon dioxide one restaurant produces annually—that’s 463,050,000 tons produced by restaurants across the country per year.  Oy.

But with help from organizations like the GRA, restaurants can make the gutsy decision to become Green Certified.  Oshman and his team have proven that sustainability and financial gain often walk arm-in-arm, a win-win for restaurant owners.  Making food handling, storage and cooking more efficient, switching out incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescent ones, using non toxic chemical cleaners and incorporating energy efficient spray valves in one establishment could lead to big savings.  On top of these alterations, the GRA’s influence helps to assist manufacturers and distributors to lower product costs.  A Green Certified establishment could save thousands of dollars in one year.

Other than persuading cash savings, sustainability has become all the rage.  Green is splashed over advertising campaigns, bumper stickers, t-shirts.  Even oil companies are putting their stake in green.  And it’s oozing into the restaurant industry, too.  A survey done by the National Restaurant Association (NRA) claims ‘environmentally friendly equipment that saves water and/or energy’ is one of the hottest new trends in restaurant kitchens; over 60 percent of restaurants installed energy-saving equipment in the last two years.  The organization has also started a new green initiative to give the industry a nudge.  Green sweet-talks customers to visit sustainable restaurants and woos them back with their positive effect on the community.

So if getting behind green results in saving massive amounts of water and electricity, upping profits and being a bit more popular in the public eye, why is it so hard to convert the business?  Is there a psychological obstruction that makes people resist change?  Or is it just pure laziness?

Eating Green isn’t just in your Veggies

The Boston-based Green Restaurant Association aims to answer the restaurant sustainability riddle by targeting the industry and the consumer.  Attacking the issue from both sides means creating more responsible restaurants and ensuring the customer appreciates the issues.  They’ve gone even further to make the Green Certification process simple and convenient to contend with the often sluggish reaction people have to change.

Working with 225 restaurants across 35 states in the U.S. and Canada, the GRA has helped a host of eateries commit to sustainability.  To become a Green Certified Restaurant they had to replace all Styrofoam products, recycle every item accepted by local waste collection companies, follow the GRA environmental guidelines and execute one environmental step after signing their contract.  Then, to continue membership, they have to complete four new steps each year.

Each restaurant is assigned an environmental consultant to gather information and identify areas of improvement.  Each year they provide a list of six to eight suggested steps and the owner elects four to complete.  As the basic environmental steps are realized, the changes get more and more sophisticated and their cost-effective choices start paying off.

“Nobody gets a free ride,” says Oshman.  Whether it is a sprouts-veggies-hummus hipster joint or a meat ‘n potatoes beer-guzzling haunt, every café, bistro and sandwich shop can make better choices for the environment.

Environmentally Fair Fare

“Initially we wondered:  are we doing this right?  Because we didn’t get a reaction…but eventually it came,” says Bob Carroll owner of The Bayside Restaurant in Westport, Massachusetts.  Tagged “the best dinky little restaurant in the Commonwealth for over thirty years”, The Bayside was voted the first Green Restaurant in the state by the GRA in 2003.

Along with his wife, Nancy, the Carrolls opened The Bayside in 1974 in a remote village called Horseneck Beach.  The small yellow building is nestled across the road from the ocean with views of Cape Cod across the bay.  With a breezy outdoor patio and a cozy indoor dining room, the restaurant gives off an informal, friendly vibe.  There are only a few restaurants nearby, so while many of the guests are repeat customers, the weekend brings hoards of outsiders discovering the beauty of small Westport.

During Bayside’s infant years, Bob knew there was a problem when he filled up his truck with recyclables and noticed the garbage wasn’t separated at the landfill—he had to do it himself.  After discussing the matter at town meetings, recycling programs were finally offered; this event inspired the Carrolls to make further revisions.

“I believe in fresh, real, honest, authentic food,” says Nancy who considers locally grown and organic products the best-tasting and reminiscent of the foods she ate growing up on a farm.  The vegetables, berries, sodas, beer, wine, fish, and quahogs—their specialty—are either grown by the farmer down the street, distilled in the brewery minutes away or plucked from the Westport River.  They also use free-range chicken and grass-fed cattle.

In essence, the Carrolls have been operating in the green since before anyone had a definition for it.  After reading about the GRA in a trade magazine, they decided to obtain Green Certification which invited many changes around The Bayside.  They use non-toxic chemical cleaners, recycled chlorine free paper napkins and compact fluorescent light bulbs.  In the kitchen, they installed Energystar appliances to increase efficiency.  You’ll find corn-based cutlery on the tables and outside, the Carrolls operate their own well.  They collect used frying oil which at least five local farmers convert to biodiesel for their trucks.  This year they’ll work to start composting, and Bob and Nancy dream of receiving enough funding for a wind turbine, a major feat.

“We have to be responsible for what we put in our mouths,” Nancy says.  The Carrolls try to educate their customers who have gradually become more conscious of the environmental strides they’ve taken.  “We think about it constantly,” Bob tells me, and he encourages his guests to think about it, too.  They not only provide an admirable example for their gaggle of kids and grandkids, but also for the restaurant industry.

Get Your Daily Helping of Green

Sure, the food was tasty and the service snappy, but my morality refuses to be sated.  As I leave dinner, I think my stomach and my ethics would now be contented if I visited a green restaurant instead.  Luckily most states offer green cuisine options serving up palatable platefuls that fill up stomach and soul.  So next time I’ll make the wise decision to dine sustainable and support the restaurants that have made the bold choice to give us a better choice when it comes to food.

Lee Graham has been fascinated with both biology and computers ever since he was a young boy. These two interests have come together into an innovative new trend called evolutionary computing. Lee is playing his role with his ”Virtual Creatures” evolution simulator.

Lee grew up in a house with a huge forest in the backyard and he loved to catch and study animals such as frogs and snakes. When not out learning about nature, he could often be found on a computer such as the one his father bought him when he was 7 years old. “I had to choose between biology and computer science” recalls Lee from his high school days. “I went with computers because I thought that would lead to better opportunities”. What he didn’t realize was just how useful his background in biology would prove to be.

As Lee was nearing the end of his undergraduate computer science degree at Carleton University he noticed a course in evolutionary computing. Evolution, a theory first published by Charles Darwin in his “On the Origin of Species” proposes that species can evolve over the course of generations by means of random mutation and natural selection. Evolutionary computing uses these concepts to enhance the capabilities of computer programs.

The course propelled Lee into an academic career exploring the power of evolution as a computer algorithm, which is a procedure for solving problems. For his PHD thesis he developed a computer program called “Virtual Creatures”, a system that uses evolutionary processes to transform simple blocks, or cuboids, into complex creatures. You set what qualities will be considered beneficial in the potential creature, also known as the fitness function, and evolution does the rest of the work. The results are often far from predictable. “Lots of times I use the same fitness function and there is a new creature every time” says Lee. “That is my favorite part.”

Evolutionary algorithms are used to solve the problem of optimization. Holger Hoos, a computer science professor at UBC, explains that an optimization problem is one where there are many possible solutions and the goal is to find the best one. Dr. Hoos notes that these types of problems are ubiquitous. “There are tons of optimization problems out there. They occur in all sciences and in industry as well”.

The classic example is called the travelling salesman. Here a salesman has to visit a number of cities and there is a cost associated with traveling from any one city to another. The goal is to figure out the cheapest way for the salesman to visit each city and return to where he started. 

Evolutionary algorithms are one of the hot tools being used to solve problems like this. “An evolutionary algorithm is one that mimics certain principles from biological evolution,” explains Dr. Hoos. To solve an optimization problem with an evolutionary algorithm you need to start with a set of possible solutions. By applying evolutionary operators to these solutions, better solutions can emerge.

This takes place through processes of mutation, recombination and selection. Mutation means making random small changes to some of the solutions.  Recombination involves combining parts from two “parent” solutions to create a new “child” solution. This is similar to what happens in humans when sperm cells and egg cells are combined. Selection is the process of keeping the best, or most “fit”, solutions and throwing out the weak ones. Just like with biological evolution, if you apply these three operators repeatedly the results can be surprisingly impressive. 

Lee’s program uses an evolutionary algorithm such as this to create his virtual creatures. “The most fun for the user is that you can tune the fitness measure,” says Lee. “This means that you can say what it is about creatures that you will like”. Some of Lee’s fitness measures include how fast the creature can run, how high it can jump, whether it will evolve on flat or rugged terrain and its average height above the ground.

Once the fitness measure has been set, the process of evolution can be started. “The program will keep going, generation after generation” says Lee. “It often takes days and weeks of computing time for one creature to evolve to completion”. Since his program takes so long to run, Lee decided to put it on his website and ask people to donate CPU time to run his experiments.

Shane Killian, a web designer from North Carolina, is one of over 70 people that volunteered to test Lee’s program. “It sounded cool and I thought I’d give it a shot,” says Shane. He still recalls the first creature his computer evolved. “It was a kind of a one-eared bunny. It hopped, and had this head, and had one long ear sticking out of it”. Even Lee was surprised when he saw the result. “He was actually afraid for a bit that the bunny was cheating because of how well it worked” recalls Shane.

Shane sees Lee’s program a great educational tool. “You get a really good sense of how powerful evolution is. You start out with these sorry random creatures who can hardly do anything except fall over, and 500 generations later you have this amazing thing that looks like someone designed it,” says Shane.

Lee appreciates his program’s educational value, but he created it to test new theories of how evolutionary algorithms can be improved. One such theory he has been working on is called exaptation. This is where a trait evolves because it serves one function and subsequently evolves to serve another. The example he gives is how birds evolved from dinosaurs. “Their forelimbs were exapted to become wings,” explains Lee. While their initial function was for walking, they later evolved to aid in flight.

While Lee explores evolutionary algorithms for academic purposes, Dr. Hoos is currently consulting for a Vancouver company called Actenum that specializes in tackling environmentally-related optimization problems. He believes that solving optimization problems will be key in answering the challenges of our time. “At the heart of many conflicts in the world there is competition for resources. Since these resources are quite limited, we need to find efficient ways to utilize them”. He refers to fossil fuels specifically. “One key to making progress in global warming is to use fossil fuels more efficiently. This is an optimization problem”.

With the role of optimization problems increasing so rapidly, so will the need for evolutionary algorithms. There are already many success stories, including the design of a NASA antenna in 2006. Using an evolutionary algorithm, the US space agency produced the ST5 X-band antenna that according to Lee “looked kind of funky” but worked amazingly well. “It consumed less power, took less man hours to produce and outperformed its conventionally designed counterpart,” says Lee.

In September 2008, evolution will take another leap, this time into pop culture. The evolution-based video game Spore was announced in 2005 by Electronic Arts and has since become one of the most anticipated game releases in recent memory. It was voted as best in show at the E3 video games trade show in both 2005 and 2006. “The only reason it didn’t win 2007 was because people were tired of it winning” says avid gamer Jonathan Abrams. “It’s also been heavily covered by gaming magazines and blogs.”

Abrams is looking forward to becoming a virtual evolutionary biologist when Spore is finally released. “The scope of Spore is much bigger than any game I have ever seen” says Abrams. “In most games, you control characters that have been designed for you, to do tasks that have been designed for you. Spore will allow the player to evolve creatures and share them with other players over the internet. I don’t think even the developers can predict what kind of strange creatures will be developed once the game is released.”

Whether it is being used to generate virtual creatures, build antennas, solve global warming or entertain gamers, evolution is a concept that has evolved beyond the scope of biology alone. Lee believes that the field of evolutionary computing is still in its infancy and its potential is limitless. “In the future as computing power increases we’ll be able to do some interesting robot evolution” predicts Lee.  “We’ll be able to simply propose a problem that you want the robot to solve and let the robot evolve to figure out how to solve it.”

For now, Lee is happy that programs such as his are able increase the public awareness of evolution and biology. “I would like to steer the software in the direction of something that’s easy and enjoyable for the average Joe to use,” comments Lee. “Hopefully people will get some experience with evolutionary computing, and through that gain an understanding of evolution itself, which is seriously lacking nowadays.”

Traffic is moving well. I’m in a car with Dr. Sandro Rizoli, somewhere between Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario. There are coolers full of blood in the back seats and trunk. “If someone rear-ends us right now,” Dr. Rizoli says, “they’re going to feel really bad: there’ll be blood everywhere.”

He jokes, but he takes car accidents very seriously in his work as a surgeon. Car accidents are one of the leading causes of life-threatening injuries, what doctors call trauma. Of all the Canadians admitted for trauma each year, 6500 die. It is the leading cause of death for people under the age of 45 in Canada and worldwide.

“Trauma patients die from two things: head injuries or bleeding,” says Dr. Rizoli. Head injuries and brain damage are tough, but “patients that don’t stop bleeding are worse. No matter how well we stitch them up, if they keep bleeding, they won’t get better.”

Dr. Rizoli is the director of trauma research at the Sunnybrook Institute and an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on bleeding and trauma. He is also my dad, which is why I am in the car with him. He needs someone to carry the coolers.

Normally, the body stops bleeding by coagulating. Coagulation is the process that creates scabs, like when you scrape your knee. It keeps you from losing blood, and is the first step in healing.

Trouble is, trauma patients’ bodies do not act normally. Injury and shock can cause patients to become coagulopathic, that is, unable to stop bleeding. The chemical processes involved in coagulation may have trouble because of complications like hypothermia or increased blood acidity. It is also possible that patients have already lost too much blood, and along with it, many of the chemicals and building blocks needed to clot. Without scabs and clots, organs fail and patients die.

In trauma “we have to make most decisions looking at the patient. Problem is, that’s too late,” says Dr. Rizoli. If doctors knew that a trauma patient will become coagulopathic, they could do something about it. “What we need is a warning.”

Searching for the red flag that says: “I can’t stop this bleeding, deep inside of me”

Dr. Rizoli’s most recent work is searching for just that. He and his researchers at Sunnybrook are studying a blood test called thromboelastography (TEG, for short) that may be able to identify coagulopathic patients quickly.

Blood tests commonly used in trauma are not very good at this. “[They] don’t give us enough of the right kind of information.” Dr. Rizoli believes TEG may provide the right kind of information. While other tests isolate certain aspects of blood clotting, TEG uses whole blood and can provide a “big picture understanding” of coagulation.

The mechanics of thromboelastography are reasonably simple. A blood sample is put in a cup. This cup rotates gently, simulating the movement of blood in the body. A small cylinder is lowered into the middle of the cup. The cylinder and the cup do not touch, so that the rotation of the cup doesn’t rotate the cylinder.

Over time, the blood begins coagulating and clots form between the cup and the cylinder. The clots connect them and the cup’s motion begins to rotate the cylinder. By measuring when and how the cylinder moves, it is possible to see how quickly the blood coagulates, how strong its clots are, and how soon they fall apart.

TEG results can tell doctors “not just what’s wrong, but how to treat it,” says Dr. Rizoli. If the time before clotting is too long, patients may be missing the chemical factors that start the process. If the clots are weak, patients may be missing platelets, the building blocks of scabs. If the clots fall apart too quickly, the patient may need drugs to keep them from doing so.

This information could not only save lives, but also blood. Dr. Rizoli tells me about one patient who would not stop bleeding, despite doctors’ best efforts. The patient required so much that the hospital had to re-schedule operations for lack of blood. Identifying and treating coagulopathic patients early may reduce the need for massive blood transfusions later on, reducing the demand for blood.

Calibrating Coagulation

Strangely, this potentially useful test has been around for over fifty years. It was first described by Dr. Hellmut Hartert in 1948, and has been used by anesthesiologists and cardiac surgeons for years.

One of the reasons why taken trauma doctors haven’t already looked at TEG is that it’s been very difficult to carry out quickly and consistently. TEG machines have only recently become practical thanks to computer technology, explains Dr. Rizoli. Computers can graph and calculate much more quickly than trauma docs, who work under a great deal of pressure.

“Still, it’s not perfect. It’s a needy machine.” It needs to be calibrated three times a day. It requires a certain temperature. It has to be in a place where it won’t be bumped, since that could break clots and ruin the results. These things can be controlled in a scheduled operation, but not in a chaotic emergency room.

It is also hard to tell which TEG results are normal and which are a sign of trouble. In heart surgery, doctors can compare results taken during the operation to results from before the operation. Unforeseen differences between them indicate blood problems. “But they see the patient normal and then mess them up. With trauma, they come in already messed up.” There’s no before to compare to. According to an upcoming paper by Dr. Sandro Scarpelini, TEG in trauma “remains scarcely used due to lack of standard techniques and normal values.” If the test is going to be useful in trauma, doctors need a standard to compare their results to.

Which is why we’re chauffeuring three gallons of blood. It comes from 600 trauma patients, collected as part of a large study headed by Dr. Rizoli. The 2200 samples were taken while the patients were being treated at the hospital. Every time blood was required for a test, a sample was also taken for TEG testing.

These TEG tests were carried out very precisely. “We standardized everything,” says Dr. Rizoli. “From the gauge of the needle [used to take the blood], to how many times to shake the bottle, to how long the machine had been left on.” A dedicated technician carried out the tests.

We are taking the blood samples to a laboratory at McMaster University that specializes in blood analysis. In the next few months, they will be examined for traces of the chemicals involved in coagulation and evidence of clots. These results will be matched against the TEG results, as well as patient histories.

“We want to see whether TEG picked up on patients who couldn’t clot.” If it did, the information could be used to establish standards for TEG testing in trauma, and perhaps lead to its use in the trauma centre.

Other researchers are also excited by the potential of TEG. Dr. Kenji Inaba, a trauma researcher at the University of Southern California, has recently acquired a TEG machine. He has been “playing with TEG using pigs’ blood,” and is “just getting comfortable with it.” When he hears of Dr. Rizoli’s study, he’s impressed. He believes that there is “a lot of interest in TEG in trauma,” and that the study will “beat everybody to the punch.”

Dr. Rizoli says that may be, but that there’s still a long way to go. Data is still being collected from patients that have been at the hospital a long time. “There’s a massive amount of data.” It took almost four days just to label all the blood samples. It will be months before the test results and patient histories are matched up and analyzed.

In comparison, carrying those coolers isn’t really so hard.

Nicholas Epley believes you’re a mind reader. No, he doesn’t think you know a magic trick that will allow you to divine other people’s thoughts at a cocktail party. He’s not suggesting that you’ve developed intuitive “psychic connections” with your loved ones. And he hasn’t confused you for someone who’s dug out an old phrenology manual and started laying hands on other people’s heads, examining the bumps and lumps on their skulls for clues about their natural proclivities.

Epley is a thoroughly pragmatic social psychologist whose major scientific interest is a much more everyday kind of mind reading. What he studies is how, and how accurately, people intuit each other’s thoughts. Based at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, Epley’s research explores how we figure out the answers to questions such as these: How well does my boss think I’m doing on this project? Will my friend forgive me for getting drunk and insulting her dress? Was that thing someone just said to me meant to be aggressive, or was it a joke? Does this person think I’m smart? Do they think I’m interesting? And, perhaps most fundamentally of all, Do they think I’m hot or not?

The answers to these questions are particularly useful to us humans; we are a highly social species, and being obtuse about what others are thinking and feeling can lead to misfortune. An employee who values terse efficiency may be passed over for promotion if she doesn’t realize that her boss prefers a little small talk before meetings. A prospective suitor who can’t read the subtle moods of his love-interest may be driven away in frustration.

Still, cultural convention and personal reticence combine to make interrogating others about their private thoughts a less than practical solution. What most of us do instead is seek approximate answers to these queries based on information we already have about other people and ourselves. We do our best, in other words, to read minds.

The problem, says Epley, is that we’re not actually very good at it.

During a recent lecture in Chicago, part of an MBA course in organizational management he is teaching this quarter, Epley delighted in presenting his students with examples of exactly how dreadful most people are at sussing out other people’s thoughts. For instance, he described a series of informal experiments he’d conducted at the beginning of the quarter in which he asked business school students to predict how their peers would judge them. What did they think others would say about “how nice they were, how outgoing they were, how assertive they were,” Epley asked? Participants’ predictions turned out to be no better than random guesses.

Other behavioral scientists have researched how accurately couples in long-term relationships reported their partners’ beliefs. And in a variety of other studies, people have been asked to intuit others’ moods based on their faces, tones of voice, or the wording of their statements. In every case, whether participants are trying to make judgments about the thoughts and feelings of strangers, spouses, or best friends, people’s ability to accurately read minds is—as Epley puts it—“stunningly unimpressive.”

Epley, a tall and energetic man, describes these results with a showman’s timing, a storyteller’s feel for drama, and a scientist’s sense of intellectual mischief. It’s clear that he takes pleasure in using the tools of his profession to test the logic of our most basic social intuitions. His research, Epley says, is essentially “the scientific study of everyday life. We take your everyday experience and bring it into the laboratory and try to understand why you think as you do, why you believe what you do, act as you do.”

In a series of recent studies, for instance, he looked at anthropomorphism, the belief that a nonhuman thing like a car or a pet possesses human-like emotions and thoughts. On the one hand, you might see this phenomenon as a classic mind-reading “mistake”—when we anthropomorphize, what we’re essentially doing is trying to read the mind of something that arguably doesn’t have a mind at all. Yet Epley’s work shows that this kind of “creative” mind reading has a purpose: we do it more often when we’re lonely, as a way of providing ourselves with much-needed social connection. The study was published in the February 2008 issue of Psychological Science.

In another study, published in the July 2001 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Epley found that when people do something embarrassing, they feel much more chagrined than they should, because they “overestimate how harshly they’re going to be judged by other people.” Our brains want to help us avoid social shame. Unfortunately, they do so by wildly exaggerating our beliefs about how much we have lost face in the eyes of others. Knowing this can help to ease the pain of public disgrace. And since, as Epley notes, “one of the leading causes of suicide among teenagers is the belief that they have embarrassed themselves beyond repair,” it might even be something we’d want to teach in high school biology classes.

Epley’s research lends itself to other such practical applications. In one ongoing project, the results of which are slated to be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, he’s trying to improve people’s ability to accurately assess how attractive others will find them—what he likes to refer to as the “Am I hot or not?” question. It’s an issue of burning relevance to his subjects, many of whom are university students.

To have even a hope of getting this question right, Epley says, we must first let go of the mountain of information we know about ourselves. “I know, for instance, that my hair looks worse today than it did yesterday, or that my morning lecture went so much better than my afternoon lecture. You don’t know any of this.” Not surprisingly, people become distracted by this plethora of minutia and can’t develop a big picture perspective on the kind of person they are. As a result, they’re not able to assess their own qualities objectively.

But we can trick the mind into ignoring these extraneous details. To do this, Epley has his subjects predict how a stranger will rate them, not now, but at some later point—say, three months in the future. At first the correlation between the subjects’ predicted attractiveness ratings and the true ratings they received was barely existent. But with the future tense clause in place, subjects’ guesses shot much closer to their raters’ true perceptions.

There are a variety of other tools and tricks that you can use to combat errors in mind reading. For example, in order to step out of the egocentric bias that causes you to use yourself as the only model for how the human mind works, Epley suggests that you actively and openly seek the perspectives of others. And when you’re imagining the beliefs of another person, he says, pay attention to the fact that you’re constructing your imaginings. Don’t think that your perceptions of people’s behavior are anywhere near as concrete as your perceptions of sights, sounds, tastes, and smells—even though it may feel that way.

Epley says he doesn’t have a magic pill that’s going to suddenly make people’s thoughts an open book. But the tools he lays out do have the advantage of being both simple and, at least according to preliminary research, rather effective. Unlike magicians, psychics, and phrenologists, most people read minds “automatically, reflexively, and spontaneously,” explains Epley. They’re barely conscious of what they’re doing or how they’re doing it. Simply changing that basic fact—becoming aware of how your own expectations color your guesses about the mental and emotional states of others—can improve mind reading accuracy by leaps and bounds.

Go ahead. Try it. And if you figure out a way to get especially good at it, you might want to pay Epley a visit in his office. There’s a good chance you’ll find something interesting on his mind.

Lady scientists are popping up in movies all over the place these days. From neuroscientists and nuclear physicists to virologists and paleontologists, these gals are working their on screen appeal to defy ye olde stereotype of the old white man academician.

But it’s not all girl power and intellectual equality. For it remains the sworn duty of mainstream film producers to employ clever plot devices designed to remind audiences that even though ladies can have book smarts, at the end of the day they are still simply…women.  Erratic, overly emotional, frequently distraught and boy-crazy, I call these handy reminders the “Hollywood Coping Mechanism” or HCM for short.

Here’s a random smattering of this standard in action. How did I compile this list? My selections were made after searching the keywords “babe scientists” on the Internet Movie Database. Really.

Contact (1997) starring Jodie Foster

Dr. Ellie Arroway is a gifted scientist and researcher working on the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program. She is shown developing an interest in science as a child and getting a prestigious education at MIT. This is one of the better portrayals of a female scientist in modern cinema. Why? Because it was written by a scientist, Dr. Carl Sagan, not a screenwriter.

The HCM: Matthew McConaughey as a tanned spiritual advisor who “softens” our lead lady with his mellow charm and curly, well-conditioned locks. See audience! She’s still a woman!

Jurassic Park (1993) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), starring Laura Dern and Julianne Moore

A quick-witted paleobotanist (Dern) and a cagey behavioral paleontologist (Moore) are wonderful additions to this painfully short list. Incidentally, in both cases these scientists also happen to be the girlfriends of the male leads.

The HCM: Once the chaos ensues, the Dern’s character’s scholarly leanings take a backseat to her maternal instinct, and she becomes babysitter to the two helpless children. In the sequel, The Lost World, Julianne Moore’s character dissolves fairly quickly into the standard issue damsel in distress, requiring multiple rescues. Both characters do a lot of screaming.

Deep Blue Sea (1999), starring Saffron Burrows

Burrows plays Dr. Susan McAlester, a brilliant research scientist searching for a cure for Alzheimer’s disease using harvested brain tissue from giant genetically engineered mako sharks. You know, the old story.

The HCM: A female scientist dedicated to her research? Clearly unstable. Toss in the disturbing fact that she shows little to no interest in our rugged male hero (Thomas Jane) and we can surmise that she probably wouldn’t survive.  Outcome? Torn in half and eaten by shark.

*Horrifying side note* In the original ending, her character survives, but test audiences hated her so much (shouting “die, bitch” at the screen) that the filmmakers re-shot the ending with a grotesque death scene for our female lead, proving the extreme necessity for the HCM if producers hope to achieve box office smash potential.

Chain Reaction (1996), starring Rachel Weisz

Dr. Lily Sinclair is a physicist who has spent her entire career working on a green fuel project. Despite her prescription glasses, Dr. Sinclair just can’t get it right...cold fusion eludes her.

The HCM: Keanu Reeves surfs into the picture to save the day. Although his character is NOT A SCIENTIST, he figures out what Dr. Sinclair and her team could not. When the real action starts, Dr. Sinclair comes along for the ride, but only in the capacity of Keanu’s attractive carry-on luggage.

Sunshine (2007), starring Michelle Yeoh

Dr. Corazon, a biologist, is the only female scientist on board a spaceship whose mission is to save the human race from extinction by reigniting the dying sun.

The HCM: Yeoh’s Dr. Corazon does plenty of docile peacekeeping amongst the volatile men on the ship. She also does a lot of gardening. In her last scene, we see her holding a tiny plant and weeping before she gets killed to death by man possessing superhuman strength.

The Alien Quadrilogy (1979, 1986, 1992, 1997), starring Sigourney Weaver

Ellen Ripley is an aeronautical engineer, although this is not well known to anyone other than crazed film nerds. I felt compelled to include her on this list, as she is one of the best female characters in film history, and the rest of the list was making me sad.

The HCM: Ripley appears immune to the HCM. Audiences loved her, and even when filmmakers tried to kill her in Alien 3, she came back all cloned and toned in Alien: Resurrection.

There were a handful of others considered for the list: Tara Reid as genius anthropologist Dr. Aline Cedrac in Alone In The Dark, one of the worst films of all time; Ming-Na as Dr. Aki Ross in Final Fantasy, a cool character, but completely computer animated; any number of Bond Girls, who are often scientists although they spend no time doing any kind of science on screen. For example, in The World Is Not Enough, Denise Richards plays nuclear physicist Dr. Christmas Jones. I think I need to type that again. Nuclear physicist Dr. Christmas Jones. She carries a briefcase and other assorted mystery instruments, but mostly just works her short shorts.

Television does a far better job of representing women in the sciences, but that’s a whole other list. I may wear sufficiently thick glasses, but as a woman I can only research and write one comprehensive list at a time. If that.

At a special time in my Introductory Psychology class, it’s time to tell my latest batch of students about a particular classic psychology experiment. And like many good yarns, it’s a tale that involves a healthy dose of sex, lies – and the ethically questionable participation of an innocent infant called Little Albert.

In 1920, John B. Watson was a successful psychologist at Johns Hopkins University. During his tenure as an eminent scientist, Watson was also department chair, with a loving wife at home as well as a tasty side dish in his lab (in the form of Rosalie Rayner, graduate student and research assistant in his lab). For John Watson, life was good.

Watson’s biggest contribution to psychology was his beliefs on behaviourism, or the influence of our experiences on our overt actions. He claimed that any infant could grow up to be either a doctor or a thief, depending upon the environment in which they were raised. In fact, Watson felt that the environment holds such power over behavior he claimed that he could create true phobias given the right conditions.

So Watson and Rayner embarked on what would become Watson’s final published work. Appearing in a 1920 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology, it was a test of his theory that fear towards an animal could be created, and that this fear could then be transferred to other animals similar in appearance. All the researchers needed was a blank slate…

Enter Albert B., aged 11 months, stage right. Little Albert was raised almost completely from birth at the hospital, with his mother working as a wet nurse at a nearby home for ‘invalid’ children. Watson chose Albert for this experiment specifically because he was passive, stable and unemotional – the idea being that the child’s personality would guard against any lasting effects of the experiment.

When the researchers first met Albert, he showed no fear towards the test animal they had chosen - a fluffy white rat. Once the research began, Albert was introduced to the rodent repeatedly. However, each time that Albert would reach out to pet the rat, Watson would strike an iron bar with a hammer behind Albert’s head. The clanging sound scared Albert, and he would start to cry. With enough pairings of the loud noise and the presence of the white rat, Albert soon associated the rat with the fear of the sound. Seeing the white rat all by himself was enough to scare the diapers off of Little Albert. In fact, the fear response was so strong that he generalized his fear to a laundry list of similar-looking items: a Santa Claus mask, Watson’s head of greying hair, a rabbit, etc.

This experiment lasted for months, but before the researchers could reverse the effects of Albert’s conditioned fears, there was a shakedown at the research lab/love nest. Albert’s mother whisked the child away from the mad scientists. Watson and Rayner were evidently baffled by her rash action, but others have assumed that the mother was never given complete informed consent; once she discovered what was taking place, she became angry and removed Little Albert from their clutches. No one has seen or heard from the little lad since. The end.

At this point in the lecture, my students stare at me in disbelief. How could scientists do this to an infant? Was he scarred for life? Did he move to the tropics, unable to contend with frosty white winters and women sporting fur coats? Did his fear of the white and fluffy transfer into an aggression only satiated by clubbing baby seals in the frigid Canadian North? Doesn’t anyone know what happened to Little Albert?

The truth behind the tale of Little Albert is simple: no one knows what happened to him. The tryst between Watson and Rayner was exposed soon after the experiment ended, forcing the psychologist to resign from Johns Hopkins. Although he ran away with Rayner and had a successful career in advertising, Watson never overcame the loss of his academic career. Shortly before his death in 1958, he burned all of his documents – and any chance of learning Albert’s full identity.

To further compound the mystery, a 1989 review by Paul and Blumenthal of the University of Massachusetts published in the Psychological Record found that textbooks would often alter details of the experiment or fabricate a “happy ending” where Albert goes on to live a mentally healthy and happy life.

In the most detailed examination of the Little Albert experiment, Benjamin Harris of Vassar College notes in a 1979 issue of American Psychologist that Watson himself would change aspects of the experiment to improve the appearance of the experiment. Compound these inaccuracies with Internet rumors that Little Albert was an orphan stolen for experimentation/a kid that Watson babysat for a university janitor/Watson’s very own son, and it’s easy to see how the mystery around the myth has continued decades after the original experiment.

But take heart. Although many versions of the story claim that Albert’s conditioning was never reversed, there might not have even been a phobia to extinguish. Harris’ review found that after Albert supposedly acquired his intense phobia of the white rat, there were random intervals during testing when Albert seemed completely fine with the rodent. Watson and Rayner would sometimes find the boy petting the rat without any apparent fear, just a healthy dose of average childhood curiosity. 

If the phobia was as intense as the researchers claimed, Little Albert would have consistently drawn back from the rodent. Add that inconsistency to grand claims made on the basis of one study, with one participant with no successful replications since, and it’s questionable that Albert’s fear was even created in the first place. Little Albert, supposed victim of one of psychology’s most famous and diabolical experiments, was merely the participant of a weak pilot study that never really worked. He probably turned out fine. 

Then again, if you see an elderly gentleman have an anxiety attack at the sight of the Easter Bunny in a mall, give me a call.

In the second section of Samuel Barber’s exquisitely mournful composition “Adagio for Strings,” the cellos, violas, and violins join together to build to a rising melodic climax, reaching a thrilling, almost keening peak of grief - and then sharply stop. There is a breathtaking silence that lasts several long seconds. Finally, after more than a few thudding heartbeats, the instruments resume their play with a series of soft chords that now seem painfully delicate, carrying the piece to its sighing, fading conclusion. 

When you listen to “Adagio for Strings,” that brief pause two thirds of the way into the music is anything but empty; in fact, it fairly aches with woe. Of course classical composers, jazz musicians, and pop stars alike have always known the power of the pregnant pause. They carefully insert silence in between their notes, using it like a supple extra voice. It can be full of tension, humor, serenity, or dramatic finality, its character conditioned by the shape of the space it occupies. And now psychologists and neuroscientists are beginning to unravel why, exactly, silence speaks so many volumes. 

For example last year University of Arkansas researcher Elizabeth Margulis showed that people hear pauses in music very differently based on the specific context of the silence. Using listening tests to investigate people’s responses to silences contained within musical excerpts, she found that participants perceived changes in both the duration and the amount of tension in the acoustic void depending on the music around it. Margulis also asked participants to report whether they had experienced “a sensation of beats” during a musical silence and indeed some listeners reported hearing subtle differences in what they perceive as the meter of the very same silence—an astonishing, yet somehow intuitive finding. Silence, it seems, actually has a rhythm. The most rhythmic silence in Margulis’s study belonged to an excerpt from Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, where a pattern of strong, then soft, beats had been clearly established. When the pause arrived, straight after a strong beat, listeners instinctively supplied their own answering pulse to continue the pattern. 

It shouldn’t really be a revelation that this is so. University of California, San Diego neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran, an expert on visual perception, is one of many scientists who have observed that the brain, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Ramachandran uses this insight to explain the workings of various optical illusions. These usually occur because the brain automatically fills in any odd gaps in its retinal image, resulting in convincingly complete, but sometimes erroneous, impressions of the world around us. The brain appears to deal with auditory caesuras in much the same way. It deftly smooths out rifts in the landscape of sound by suffusing the quiet chasms with its own ideas about what ought to belong there. 

Margulis agrees. In her study, which was published in the June 2007 issue of the journal Music Perception she writes that “impressions of the music that preceded the silence seep into the gap, as do expectations about what may follow.”

While this may sound like a bad thing—our minds won’t even let us enjoy a moment’s peaceful rest without attempting to cram it full of meaning!—the work of scientists at Stanford University’s School of Medicine suggests that the opposite is probably true. A team led by psychiatrist Vinod Menon used fMRI scans to look at the brains of volunteers as they listened to an unfamiliar18th century symphony, revealing that without pauses, the brain tends to get, well, just a little sidetracked when it hears long stretches of uninterrupted music. A continuous melodic flow allows our attention to wander, and overall cognitive activity is surprisingly subdued during these periods. 

When you thrown in an unexpected silence in the midst of the instrumentation, however, neuronal activity spikes right away. Silence, it turns out, creates a veritable cognitive commotion in both the ventral and dorsal regions of the right prefrontal cortex. These are areas of the brain that are known to play an important role in learning and memory. It’s as if the pauses in the music trigger the brain to sit up and pay close attention, activating working memory and stimulating the vigorous processing of both the sounds we’ve just heard and those we’re about to hear. 

Essentially the authors suggest that silence may be what prompts our minds to pick out “salient events"—the beginning of the next movement, say—from what would otherwise be nothing but “a continuous stream of undifferentiated information.” Silence doesn’t just affect the brain, either. According to Menon, the heart rates of his subjects often changed markedly during the pauses as well. Our whole bodies are profoundly affected by these moments of apparent nothingness. 

So the brain abhors a vacuum, and works very hard to pour its own percolating predictions into perceptual gaps wherever they occur. At the same time, without these gaps—without some moments of stillness in the confusion of life—the brain would be hard-pressed to properly process the concrete details of the world. What a temperamental, contradictory creature inhabits our skulls.

But what delight arises from its contradictions. Who among us, after all, would give up the experience of hearing an electrifying pause in the middle of a sweeping musical movement? Time lengthens, tension builds, and thanks to science, next time you listen to a meaningful silence you’ll know that it does, after all, have a sound. It might not enter your ears, but that won’t stop it from speaking directly to your brain.

Darwin had a big one. As did Plato and Aristotle. Pythagoras most certainly had one, a long one judging from his statue. Leonardo da Vinci’s grew to illustrious lengths later in life.

So why, if all these famous scientists had beards to stroke when being clever and contemplative, is sporting facial hair in the lab a big no-no? Well, it appears that facial hair provides a massive substrate on which bacteria can frolic and play. So much so that a bearded man wearing a face mask sheds significantly much more bacteria than a non-bearded man or woman. In fact the risk posed by the facial hair bacterial fallout is such that the authors of the February 2000 paper in Anaesthesia end their abstract with this line: Bearded males may also consider removing their beards. So it appears that a responsible doctor in this day and age should be sure to shave.

Not only does this run counter to the bearded examples set forth by such medical luminaries as Galer, Osling, Cushing and Freud but it also runs counter to the annals of history. A 16th century doctor by the name of Adrian Junius claimed that a beard provided protection against diseases.

And of course, there was the holy aspect. There had to be a good reason why God and Jesus failed to shave themselves, that didn’t come down to their busy schedules. Perhaps it was to protect themselves against throat illnesses, surmised one Victorian-era religious publication.

But anti-beard arguments also ran rife in pre-Victorian times: Beards trapped food and the stuff you spewed out when you sneezed. At a stretch, they could even go as far as to catch fire and trap vermin, some argued. This all came to a head in 1907, with a rather remarkable experiment. A French scientist took one bearded and one clean shaven man from the streets of Paris and asked each of them to kiss a woman, whose lips were previously swabbed with antiseptic. After each smooth, her lips were swabbed and the the cultures were smeared on agar. The hairy kiss, it turned out, was by far the more microbial-ly diverse.

Now this charming and simple experiment provides an objective and scientific argument against the beard but it was not always so. According to One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair by Allan Peterkin the Chicago Chronicle wrote in 1903 that the average beard harboured 200,000 “misanthropic microbes.” It didn’t end there. Peterkin cites another instance where a New Jersey legislator tried to introduce a filthy whisker tax, following in Russia’s footsteps.

The Anti-Beard Brigade

Fast forward to 1967, when three scientists from the Industrial Health and Safety Office in Maryland tested their hypothesis that “a bearded man subjects his family and friends to risk of infection if his beard is contaminated by infectious microorganisms while he is working in a microbiological laboratory.” The result of their studies was a paper published in Applied Microbiology titled “Microbiological Laboratory Hazard of Bearded Men.”

And I must admit, it was creatively thorough in its methods. Part of the experiment consisted of exposing the natural hair beard of a mannequin (see photo) to a virus, then getting baby chicks to nestle their cute fluffy heads against the beard, and later killing them to see if they caught the virus from their stints of beard nuzzling. Two of the three chicks caught the disease.

Now I have to dwell on this for a second because who, in their right mind, other than some maniacal sick twisted scientists with an easter fetish, would hug baby chicks to his bristled cheek in the lab, like ever??? Maybe the moral isn’t to shave but to not rub your face against baby chicks. In which case one could take this a step further and say, don’t hire crazy bearded people in your lab.

Moving along. The other half of the experiment consisted of exposing four volunteers with 73 day old beards (why 73? it’s a prime number sure. But what significance does it have to facial hair growth? ) to bacteria, and seeing how well they retained the bacteria. Surprise, surprise, they retained much more bacteria than did plain simple skin. But what else is new?

There are other reasons why a beard is a risk in the modern day lab. For one, they get in the way of a tight seal on your respirator. And while the Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesn’t ban facial hair outright they do say that if a good seal on your respirator is thwarted because of facial hair it must be trimmed or removed. But really, let’s be honest. Of course facial hair breaks the seal. One study in the American Industry Hygiene Association Journal from 1984 (just think back to the hair that era saw...like Ben ‘Obi-Wan’ Kenobi’s respectful beard in “Return of the Jedi") found that men with facial hair saw a 246 fold drop in the protection offered by a half-mask respirator compared to the clean shaven men.

So Then Why Do Scientists Love Them So Much?

So where does this leave the populace? Well, John Curran, an anaesthetist at Nottingham City Hospital and Brian Pollard, a senior lecturer in anaesthesia at Manchester Royal Infirmary found themselves disagreeing over what a beard really meant; Curran asserts that “they are dirty, suiting woolly minded academics disinclined to arise for the morning ablutions” while Pollard “believes that beards, a natural state of affairs, signify wisdom”. So like any responsible scientist in a tiff, they conducted a controlled study and aired the results, and their debate in the December issue of the British Medical Journal.

They surveyed the attendees of a recent anaesthetic scientific meeting and found that 21 (34%) of 62 academics wore beards or moustaches, compared with only five of the 83 (6%) British National Health Service consultants. This results was statistically significant and it begged the question: why did academic anaesthetists shave less than their colleagues in the NHS?

The two authors look inward for an answer. After all, Pollard, an academic, sports a moustache while Curran, a shaver, is an NHS consultant. But all they find are age-old quotes that support both sides of the debate.

So perhaps it’s all about weighing the pros and cons. Or mitigating the risks your beard pose to those around you. Or frequently washing your beard. Or passing up the opportunity to nuzzle with chicks when you’re sick with a virus that can leap from humans to birds. Or deciding that yes, Santa Claus and Darwin both got something right, asides from sacks of toys and evolution.

Oppenheimer tote bag $15. Dude. The design features a portrait J. Robert Oppenheimer, in profile, depicted with the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb blast behind him & his famous quote followed by his signature. Iconography has never been so hot.

Ethanol wine glasses set of four, $64, from Molecular Muse. Perfect to enjoy some champagne, post-post modern stylez.

CHEMISTRY: A Screen Printed Artist Book about Science and Attraction, $22. It’s a small artful accordion book that spends 10 pages dwelling on the chemistry of attraction from Blue Valentine Press.

Sterling silver chromosome pendant, $80, from Bronze Girl. It’s beautiful. It’s a chromosome. And it’s shiny! What more does a girl want?

Then - well ok it’s a bit late to start this knitting project but maybe for next year - there’s the mobius shawl that you can knit for your loved one. After all, what say I love you more than the symbol for infinity coupled with the patience of knuckling down and knitting that much yarn into a garment??. Here’s the pattern. If you want a shortcut, for $40 you can buy a magenta one knit out of acrylic over at Etsy: Mobius magenta shawl.

And finally for those who want to put things baldly, there are the countless fertility pouches that Stitch PIxie sells that feature egg and sperm and ovaries all sewn on in vinyl. Perfect for storing tampons, birth control (which would make it the anti-fertillity pouch), what have you ($12-$25 depending on design). There’s even a naughty, but strangely unerotic, vulva one. 

It’s Monday night and I’ve just gone and asked my Girl Guides what they think of when they hear the words “science” or “scientists”. We go around the circle as they free associate, somewhat harshly: “Potions and bubbles,” “White jackets,” “Mixing chemicals,” “No fun,” “People with glasses.” “Hair tied back and lab coats,” “Purple, and grey hair”.

“Ugly people, and people with glasses” says Victoria. “Thick glasses”, someone clarifies. Suddenly, Dalia remembers about science class at school, and the girls list heat, condensation, optics, gas (“farts”, I hear someone whisper before the group dissolves into giggles), electricity, liquids, and methane.

“Did you know that you are sitting with two scientists right now”? I ask. Victoria covers her mouth with her hands and looks distressed. “I wouldn’t have said ugly if I knew that”.

Girl Guides of Canada have offered increasing numbers of science-related badges over its history: a conservation badge was established by 1959, a weather badge was introduced in 1968, the ecologist badge made its way into the program in 1975, and an endangered species badge showed up in the 1990s. Still, most of the badges added to the program since the 1930s focus on biology - the physical sciences were neglected when it came to the medallions of embroidery on our sashes.

That all changed a couple years ago with the introduction of the physics, chemistry, and engineering badges, as well as the first badge ever to be called simply, “science”. Needless to say my not-so-inner science nerd was giddy at this discovery. Before you could say “Paracelsus”, my nine to 11 year-old Guides had earned the new chemistry badge by solving a “mystery” using coffee-filter chromatography, invisible lemon-juice ink, and some pH strips I wrangled from a postdoctoral chemist friend. The quest for the physics badge was next.

The Science Girl Guides Did Way Back When

I wonder if the new badges signified a switch in the organization’s enthusiasm for doing science with the girls. When I first contact Catherine Miller, who runs the archives at Guides Canada’s National Office, she isn’t sure of the science content of the early program. But she’s eager to help me find out, digging out all the resources that have been available to Canadian girl guides since the organization came to Canada around 1910.

At the archives, I’m having trouble figuring out which parts of the early program fall under the rubric of “science”. A 1912 book called How Girls can help to build up the Empire the Handbook for Girl Guides, includes sections on “animals, nature and plants, as well as observation of signs, spooring…”, and “sanitation, nursing, invalid foods, and stoorkeeping”. The book, which was written by the sibling founders of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, Lord Baden-Powell and his sister, Agnes, is organized into chapters titled “Finding the Injured” and “Tending the Injured”, but it’s clear that girls would have to understand biology, physiology, and math.

A 1920 publication called Girl Guide Badges and How to Win them compiled by Mrs. Janson Potts, Director of Camps includes over 75 badges. It’s a fascinating compilation of seemingly random skills – girls could earn badges called Bell-ringer, Cobbler, Commonwealth Knowledge, or Gymnast. Then there is the laundry list of traditional womanly badges: Embroideress, Lace maker, Hostess, Homemaker, and Domestic Service.

But there’s also an Air Mechanic’s badge which requires girls to have an elementary knowledge of the principles upon which an aeroplane engine operates, and an Astronomer’s badge which required girls to understand the nature and movement of stars, identify six principle constellations, find the north star using stars other than the pole star, tell the hour of the night using stars and moon, and understand the relative positions and movement of earth, sun and moon.

To earn the Electrician’s badge girls had to be able to make a simple electro-magnet, repair broken connections, know methods of rescue and resuscitation of persons suffering from shock, and understand the action of simple cells and bells.

The Geology badge required knowledge of the periods in the formation of the earth’s crust, and what is meant by stratification, dip, and faults. They also had to be able to identify twenty different minerals in their natural state, identify twenty different fossils, and the period to which they belonged, and collect six specimens of minerals or rocks, or six fossils.

Needless to say, the early science badges seem strict and extensive culminating in an overall impression of hardcore that is rare today. Miller shows me an early copy of the Guide promise and law indicating that one of the four “signposts” of Guiding is “Intelligence through progressive tests” (the others were handcraft, health, and service). By the 1990s, the program was focused on ”Fun, Friendship and Adventure” and the newest book for the girls is called “Guides on the Go!” “The aims of the organization have changed,” points out Miller.

Girl Guide Science Badges Nowadays: More Diverse & More Fun

A close comparison reveals that although the geology and electrician badges have vanished, astronomy and air mechanics still exist, as does a naturalist badge that was introduced in the 1930s. The basic requirements hadn’t changed much since they were introduced despite rapid changes in society. Nowadays countless activities compete for girls’ time and so various media compete for their attention (hence the “Guides on the Go!” perhaps). I wondered if my girls could remain focused for long enough to complete the type of badge work that used to be required.

Lucky for me, science sometimes works like a magic trick. One night I set out a milk bottle, some paper, and a hard-boiled egg. I light the paper on fire and stick it into the bottle. “Ooohh, smoke!!” I place the egg on top. The girls are all squished in as close to the jar as they can get: “It’s stretching!” “NO it’s not,” “I don’t see anything.”

For a moment I think the experiment isn’t going to work. Then, with an audible Pop! the egg slides into the bottle. The amazement in the room is palpable. I sense that in the girls’ opinion, this is one of the best things I have ever shown them. What just happened, I ask them.

“It’s like sweat”, says Victoria, “like the egg is sweating from the heat and it gets slippery and slides into the bottle”.

“Heat”, says Dalia.

“It’s because of the smoke”, they all say.

I’d love to know how many Canadian Guides are doing the science badges. At the Toronto Area store, I’m told that most badges are sold in about equal amounts, and I feel confident that most other leaders I’ve met would be at ease explaining friction. So why do I still stereotype my organization as being full of older women who are more comfortable making scrapbooks than möbius strips? It’s not as if doing things the hard way stopped Guide leaders in the past – after all, Guides was created after a group of adventurous girls demanded entry to the adventurous boys-only Scouting program in 1909. Today, many Guiders are young women who would not have felt out of place in their science classes.

Plus many basic science experiments didn’t take much. An experiment about surface tension took three ingredients: take a dish of milk, add food colouring, followed by detergent. “Can we drink the milk afterwards?” asks Victoria.

Although the instructions call for a couple of drops, Magda squirts in a stream of detergent. The colours immediately vanish into thin lines at the edge of the dish. Victoria reads out the explanation of what’s happening and complains that their colours are not “zooming and swirling” like the description says. The girls stare at it for about eight seconds before asking if they can add more detergent. Soon Dalia has found a bit of leftover cardboard and is stirring. I remind myself that this is all experimentation; they’re learning and they are interested in what will happen.

What happens is a horrible uniform green colour. “It looks like vomit”, says Dalia. I make a face, and say, “My vomit is not that colour”. She says, “Neither is mine. It looks like old man vomit. Can we play a game?”

The opportunity to do science may not strike my girls as being anything special. After all, we now live in an age of apparent equal rights for women and rapid technological advances. But they love doing experiments – and in this girls-only environment, they clearly feel comfortable enough to say what they want and participate fully.

The girls in Stephanie’s Girl Guide unit recently completed the requirements for the physics badge.

Links of interest:

Girl Guides of Canada – Guides du Canada

Way fun science experiments you can do at home:
The Edible/Inedible Experiments Archive

The Amazing Physics of Everyday Objects
Physics Experiments from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

Annnnnd the best silly putty recipe ever:

Dissolve 1 tablespoon of borax in ½ cup of water. Put 1 tablespoon of white glue and 1 tablespoon of water into a plastic cup and stir. When the glue and water are mixed well, add 1 tablespoon of the borax solution and stir.

Winter is the time of year when I like to wear boots, watch movies and eat lots of meat. Truth be told, I like meat in the fall, spring and summer too, but a duck cassoulet or a filet mignon just seems that much more satisfying when it’s freezing out, non?

Sometimes, though, with a belly full of beef, I get a nagging feeling. I’ve heard that meat is one of the most energy and land-use intensive foods a person can eat, so perhaps my winter eating habits aren’t ideal – for neither waist nor environment. Should I replace steaks with salads for the greater good of the planet? What is the most ecologically friendly meal, anyway?

As I’ve learned over the last few weeks, there is no prescription for a perfect ecological meal – there are many (many!) unanswered questions about how different foods and farming practices impact the environment. But we could stand to follow three general guidelines: 1. Eat more fruit and vegetables, especially locally grown ones. 2. Yes (sniffle), eat less meat, and fewer processed foods. 3. Overall, think about eating less, period.

The energy we get from everything we eat, whether lettuce or corn, fish or beef, originates from the sun. Plants transform solar energy via photosynthesis; cows eat grass (or corn), the products of this solar energy; we eat cows. But if we left food production entirely to nature, we wouldn’t have enough to sustain ourselves – so we turn to agriculture, which uses various tactics like irrigation, fertilization and pesticides to maximize the amount of solar energy that is captured, harvested and assimilated in our foods.

The problem is that these tactics are very energy intensive – fertilizers are essentially fossil fuels, for example – so while agriculture may maximize yield, it also maximizes energy and water use and leaves behind a trail of chemicals and nutritionally depleted soil. Corn produced using standard agricultural practices uses four times more energy per hectare than corn grown using manpower alone, for instance. Indeed, half of America’s land, 80 percent of its fresh water, and 17 percent of the fossil fuels Americans use go toward producing food.

(Although fish are not part of our standard agricultural system, there are certainly environmental issues surrounding them, too – such as how the fish are harvested and how far they travel to get to you, notes Gail Feenstra, a Food Systems Analyst at the UC Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute.)

Generally, the higher up on the food chain you go – from plants to animals, say – the bigger the energy trail that is left behind by their production. This is because one has to account for not only what went into raising the animal you are eating, but also what went into producing its food (and cows eat a lot: the U.S. livestock population consumes seven times more grain than Americans do themselves). In addition, as we know from the first two laws of thermodynamics, energy transfer from one form to another is never 100% efficient. As you move up the food chain from green plants to, say, cows, lots of energy is lost along the way: for every kilogram of animal protein in a steak, your delicious cow had to eat about 6 kilograms of grain protein (or about 12 kg of total grain).

Now for a caveat: a little meat isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Ruminant livestock like cows, goats and sheep can be grown on land that’s unsuitable for other crops, and they can also be fed byproducts such as soybean meal, so diets that include some meat may feed more people than vegetarian diets alone, according to a 2007 study published in Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems. This study was considering both grass-fed and corn-fed cows; it’s important to note that even corn-fed cows are typically raised on grass as calves and while no one has directly compared corn to grass-fed cows, many argue that grass-raised beef leaves a smaller ecological footprint. 

That said, we certainly don’t need to eat as much meat as we do today. On average, Americans eat more than five ounces of cooked meat and eggs per day, and while no one knows exactly how much meat consumption would optimize our land usage, it’s probably more like two ounces.

We could also do without so many processed foods. Walk down your typical grocery store aisle and most of what you’ll see – with the exception of the aforementioned fruits, veggies and raw meats – has been heavily processed. Whether the food has added sugars or fats, has been morphed into a nugget or has been freeze-dried, processing requires additional resources, which means – you guessed it – it leaves a bigger environmental footprint. 

It would also help to eat more locally than we do. “Try to find ways of buying from as close to home as possible,” suggests Joan Gussow, a writer, food producer and professor emeritus of nutrition and education at Columbia University Teacher’s College. That doesn’t mean going to the McDonald’s a mile down the road, though. Shopping at the farmer’s market rather than the supermarket will coax you to eat fewer unprocessed foods, and it may help minimize greenhouse gas emissions since the foods you’re eating haven’t been trucked across the country. It’s especially good if the local food you buy is organic, since organic farming doesn’t use pesticides and leaves the soil in better shape.

Some sources, however, challenge the idea that local and organic is always good. Indeed, a massive UK government-sponsored review of the environmental impacts of food production and consumption found that, when attempting to follow energy costs for the entire product life cycle, organic meat farming was sometimes “worse” for the environment (organic agriculture was definitely better, though).

The report found that under UK conditions organic chicken and beef required more energy than conventional methods. In contrast, organic pig and sheep farming required less than conventional farming. Likewise, the efficiency of mass food transport in the UK means that buying local isn’t necessarily a shortcut to good environmental decisions. The University of Manchester authors suggest that walking to the store, instead of driving, will probably make the most significant dent in your carbon dioxide food bills.

Finally, our planet would be a lot happier if we just ate less. On average, Americans tend to eat 3790 calories every day, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. We need a lot less than that. A moderately active 30-year-old woman needs about 2,000 calories a day; a similar man needs 2,600. “If you eat more food than you need, then we have to produce more food that you didn’t need,” points out Christian Peters, a postdoctoral associate in crop and soil sciences at Cornell University. “It doesn’t make sense for the environment. It doesn’t make sense for your health, either.”

Alas, what does this mean for yours truly, the Biggest Beef-o-Phile in Brooklyn? Sadly, I’ll admit, I could do with less meat and more fruits and veggies on my plate. At least I can pat myself on the back for not eating THAT many processed foods – I haven’t had a McNugget in 15 years, and I don’t eat cereal for breakfast. But then, wait: beer is a processed food, isn’t it?

Less meat AND less beer? This is going to be a tougher winter than I thought.

WHY GRAINS ARE GREENER THAN GRISTLE
ENERGY: Eleven times more energy is required to make a calorie of beef protein than a calorie of grain protein.
WATER: When compared pound for pound, animal production requires at least 100 times more water than grain.
LAND USE: Beef requires 31 times more land area than the equivalent quantity of grain.

HOW MUCH ENERGY (IN CALORIES) IS REQUIRED TO MAKE A SINGLE CALORIE OF MEAT?
(from the September 2003 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition)
Lamb: 57 calories (~ 29 if pasture fed only)
Beef: 40 calories (~20 if pasture fed only)
Pigs: 14 calories
Turkeys: 10 calories
Broiler chickens: 4 calories

Alternatively…

HOW MUCH ENERGY (IN MEGAJOULES) IS REQUIRED TO MAKE A SINGLE KILOGRAM OF MEAT?
(from the UK Department of Environmental, Food and Rural Affairs 2006 “Shopping Trolley” report)
Beef: 28 MJ
Lamb: 23 MJ (organic lamb: 18 MJ)
Pork: 17 MJ
Chicken: 12 MJ (organic chicken: 16 MJ)

Late last summer I had a nightmare whereby climate change ruined my life. Apparently, climate change stresses me out and this was my brain’s way of sounding the alarm. It went something like this:

I was house hunting. In overpriced housing bubbly Vancouver.  And finally, of all miracles I found the perfect property. It was part of a fictional neighbourhood that was truly up and coming. There, I found an empty beachfront lot. It was cheap and I was elated. That is until I realized that within the next fifty years my perfect happy home would be ever so slightly submerged by rising sea levels. This dampened my future floorboards and hopes. I woke up crestfallen and blue.

Gore help me, my climate change anxiety was large enough to take root in my subconscious and sprout in my dreams. But the real question was whether my nightmare was a symptom of a greater collective anxiety in our society.

So I coined my affliction “Climate Change Anxiety Disorder” and began to research whether there was any evidence to legitimize my newly minted malady.

There is very little doubt that climate change itself will trigger numerous mental maladies. Climate-related natural disasters displace families, screw over their homes, and can have long lasting effects on their levels of anxiety and depression.

As a case in point, the incidence of mental illness doubled in the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in the months following the disaster. Meanwhile Australia is currently experiencing the worst drought it’s suffered in over a millennium and rural farmers are taxed. The mental health organization Beyond Blue found that a drought-stricken Australian farmer commits suicide every four days, twice that of the national average. On the other end of the spectrum, flood victims were similarly distraught in 1997 during the Red River flood.

By 2080 some 4.5 million UK citizens will face a serious risk of flooding. The International Futures Forum’s report on the relationship between climate change and mental health forecasts that the mental health of these citizens will be weighed down by the flooding events themselves, together with the economic stress of insurance withdrawals and difficulty selling houses. So yes, climate change spells mental gloom.

But my real question was whether the anticipation of its effects alone could tax our psyches.

“I don’t have nightmares, but I do lash out at people,” says Jason, who runs a VoIP phone company in Vancouver. He admitted to assuming the worst was in store (“everything will go to hell”). Hence his reaction to those that waste resources: “If a hummer goes by I want to blow it up.”

But others are finding the psychological green landscape a bit more zen. “I don’t hear as much “the sky is falling” stuff as I used to,” says Trevor, a web developer.

And then there’s the guilt. “I feel cognitive dissonance between climate change and my strong desire to burn fossil fuels,” admits Jonathan, who runs a software company in town.

When doomsday felt nigh, back at the height of the Cold War, many school children didn’t think they’d make it to adulthood. The chronic fear of nuclear war was coined “nuclear anxiety” and it was pervasive. No wonder kids back then were reported as being unmotivated and wracked with despair. It’s altogether possible that global warming may take a similar toll on our psyches. 

Richard Kefford, Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney, is quick to point out in an article published in The Medical Journal of Australia last year that the human response to overwhelming catastrophes is denial, despondency and paralyzing helplessness.

And frankly, what could possibly constitute “overwhelming catastrophe” better than climate change?

Now I couldn’t find any medical terms coined to describe this climate change doom and gloom. But I did find a term that is used to describe the distress caused by witnessing a change or transformation of one’s home. The man who coined the term, a philosopher at the University of Newcastle in Australia, Glenn Albrecht, likened it to being homesick at home. You yourself haven’t aren’t going anywhere, but the stable environment you grew up in is.

So perhaps I’m not so much anxious as suffering from solastalgia.

So what can I do? Mostly, chill out. I recounted my so-called “nightmare” to a (productively utilitarian) climate change scientist friend who reassured me that 50 centimeters of sea level rise in the next century shouldn’t pose a serious threat to my nesting instincts. If I was truly worried she suggested that I check the climate change forecasts before investing in property or hunkering down somewhere.

Sure enough the Sierra Club released a Google Earth program that shows how much of Vancouver’s mainland will be underwater with sea level rise. Perhaps I should get into the dike business.

One of my college friends spent a year abroad in Australia as a teenager. I was, of course, extraordinarily jealous. However, as we talked more about her experience, she mentioned a very strange side effect of her trip Down Under. While living Sydney she didn’t have her ‘monthly visitor’ for the entire year.  “A whole year?” I said, “Were you ill or something?” To which she replied, “No I wasn’t ill or anything, but I think was just stressed with the move down there and everything, at least that’s what my doctor said.”

As it turns out, my friend is not the only one to experience irregular or skipped menstrual cycles for seemingly strange reasons. In fact, it has long been assumed among doctors and fertility specialists that stress can lead to missed periods. This becomes particularly important with couples who are having problems conceiving. As a result, researchers have conducted countless studies to see if there is a link between stress and ovulation. Some have proposed that psychological counseling may have a positive effect on fertility.

However, the studies themselves have brought mixed results. For example, a 2000 study by Alice Domar and colleagues at Harvard Medical School found a causal link between psychological counseling and increased fertility. Yet another study by Lisbeth Anderheim and colleagues at Gotberg University, also in 2000, found the opposite. Of course periods themselves are slightly mysterious, in that we still don’t really know why humans bother to have them at all.

The mixed results could stem from the difference between psychological stress and physiological stress. It is common knowledge that women who are having physical health problems often stop ovulating; missed periods are a well-known side-effect of anorexia and some forms of cancer. The onset of ovulation can also be affecting by social environments. But what about psychological stress? Can that affect ovulation and fertility as well?

To answer this question, a team of anthropologists at Harvard University, led by Peter Ellison, decided to test women for changes in ovulation who were going through a very stressful time in their lives: preparing for the MCAT. The MCAT, or the Medical College Admission Test, is the exam taken for all those hoping to enter medical school. It takes over nine hours to complete and requires months of preparation. A good score can mean admission into a great medical school. A bad score is doom. A stressful time indeed.

So Ellison examined female juniors at Harvard who were preparing for the MCAT and compared their anxiety levels (and ovulation schedules) to women who were not preparing for the MCAT.  In order to make sure there were no other factors at play, all the women were otherwise physically healthy, were not using any oral contraceptive pill that would change hormone levels, and all reported normal ovulation.

The testing consisted of both sets of subjects completing questionnaires about their perceived stress and anxiety levels, as well as having the subjects monitor their menstrual cycle. In addition, daily saliva samples were taken to test for changes in hormone levels, which are often indicators of physiological stress.

The results were, in many cases, unsurprising. As one would expect, the subjects who were preparing for the MCAT reported an increased level of stress and anxiety leading up to the exam that was much greater than the control subjects. However, this stress seemed purely psychological, as there were no significant changes in hormone levels indicative of physical stress.

But despite the significant increase in stress, there was no change in ovulation or periods in either group. No matter how stressed these students were about the upcoming exam, they continued to have a visit from Aunt Flow right on schedule. This was even the case during the final days and weeks leading up to the MCAT exam, when the subjects described intense stress levels that only Harvard pre-meds can sustain. The study was published in the December 2007 issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

So what does this mean for the connection between psychological stress and missing periods? According to Ellison’s study, this connection is likely non-existent. As mentioned above, physiological stress that results from malnutrition, or even extreme anxiety levels that occur during life-threatening situations, could lead to changes in ovulation, says Ellison. But it would seem that otherwise healthy individuals cannot automatically claim that ‘stress’ is the cause of their continued missed periods; there must be some other physical cause.

As for my friend who traveled to Australia, I can only speculate that there was some other explanation for her missed periods…probably having to do with everything being upside down in the southern hemisphere.

I have long considered myself a big nerd, with a touch of pride. But only realized how soft core my shade of nerdiness was when I happened on a whole new genre of music known as nerdcore, or “geeksta” rap. It’s a type of hip hop where far-from-fly dorks rap about topics like Star Wars ("Fett’s Vette” by MC Chris) and physics ("What We Need More Of Is Science” by MC Hawking).

(Related: ”For Those About to Hypothesize: We Salute You: A top-ten list to brighten the day of even the most oppressed Petri-dish slave” January 24, 2007).

So it should come as no surprise that Vancouver, a city with a thriving hi-tech sector and clubs that pulse with hip-hop, is home to the genre’s equivalent of Timbaland.

David Cheong is an art director for video games by day but works as nerdcore’s Midas at night, lending his golden touch to sparse raps under the alias Baddd Spellah. So what’s his niche? In the words of one nerdcore artist MC Router, he’s the “awesomest beat smith.”

Nerdcore’s lyrics make it clever and dorky. Spellah’s rhythms and added sounds make it head-nodding cool. Witness his polish job on MC Chris’ “Fett’s Vette.” He adds the subtle layers of badass that make hip-hop beats so damn appealing - but in a way that never deviates from nerdcore’s sincere heart. 

It’s this skill that’s gotten Spellah working on the tunes of nerdcore luminaries. Just this past spring Spellah produced the “godfather of nerdcore” MC Frontalot‘s latest album “Secrets from the Future.” It’s probably the biggest coup for Spellah’s nerdcore career, which has spanned eight years and over a dozen nerdcore artists - along with accompanying countless all-nighters.

Last summer I weaseled my way into a recording session at Baddd Spellah’s home studio. As I knocked on the door of his East Vancouver house the cartoon avatar on his myspace page came to mind: an asian man in black framed glasses with lips pulled back and teeth bared. In direct contrast to that an unassuming man clad in a plaid shirt and khaki cords answered the door. He was thoughtful and deliberate in the way that reeks of competence.

That evening he was working with MC Jomega, aka Johanna Gustafson, a striking blonde Langley school teacher who sports periodic table socks and a voice that could slide like a trombone. Before long I was holding her lyrics up getting glances from her lemon-lime smiling eyes. “It’s the nerdcore chapter and we’re showing what it’s really worth,” she raps over some oompa loompa beats. Spellah mans Ableton Live on his computer in the next room.

A poster of Jay-Z and Bill Gates shaking hands sits above his screen. “You know its funny, those are the two spheres that are making a lot of money fly around the world right now: rap music and computers,” he says. Small wonder the marriage between the two is such a hit.

Spellah plays the first take back to MC Jomega. When it gets to the end where she says “peace out” she tilts her head forward and slaps it with her palm: “What a doooo-ooork!”

But it’s part and parcel of the genre. MC Frontalot, who gave the genre its name in the song “Nerdcore Hiphop” back in 2000, started life off as Damien Hess, a web developer and founder of his high school’s Monty Python fan club.

Since then its ranks have swelled and spread across the world. Last year MC Lars’ song “Download this Song” reached #29 on the Australian music charts. There’s even an upcoming documentary titled “Nerdcore Rising” on the topic. Needless to say, for a genre that just got named seven years ago, it’s doing just fine. And here’s why.

Between doubling the choruses of the recording MC Jomega bounces up and exclaims to no one in particular: “This is the most fun I could possibly be having!” The microphone’s popstand, MacGyvered from a clothes hanger and covered with an orphaned sock, bobs in agreement. Listening to her, so did I.

Japan is one of the healthiest countries in the developed world, with high life expectancy rates and lower incidences of of both cancer and cardiovascular disease. It must be all the sushi, right? Maybe. With its fish-rich flavors and low-fat appeal, traditional sushi is a health wonder. But much of the fish and seafood popular in sushi also comes with unwanted additives: chemical contaminants from polluted seas, such as mercury and PCBs, along with vicious pathogens including parasitic worms and deadly bacteria.

So is sushi a handy health food or a toxic roll of deadly doom and destruction?

Cons:

1) Worms. Like pretty much everyone else on the planet, fish are home to parasitic worms. One of the more common fish worms is a round worm named Anisakis simplex. They can be killed by a nice long period of deep-freezing, as can other round or tapeworms. Freezing is now law in the European Union, recommended in the FDA Food Code and Health Canada guide, but spotting parasites is up to the highly-trained chef in Japan.

Unfortunately, Anisakis can go on to harm unsuspecting sushi eaters even if frozen. People may develop allergic reactions to the worm, which can be triggered even if the squirmer is dead. One survey of Spaniards found that a full 13% of patients in clinics show some allergic sensitization to Anisakis proteins, while 19% of people who had other allergies had a full, clinical allergy to the worm. Sensitization was greater in regions of Spain where fish eating was sporadic and fish usually consumed raw. Similarly, a 1992 Japanese study found that 10% of the healthy population was sensitized to Anisakis .

2) Bugs. Fish and seafood also carry pathogens such as the deadly genus of Vibrio bacteria, and well as algae that squeeze out such delightful compounds as the terrifying paralytic shellfish toxin. From the FDA: “The toxicosis is particularly serious in elderly patients, and includes symptoms reminiscent of Alzheimer’s disease. All fatalities to date have involved elderly patients.” No scallop maki for grandma, eh?

For a full list of fun, check this FDA site here. Please note that some bad bugs and their associated toxins are denatured by cooking (Salmonella, Botulism, Vibrio species), but others can survive freezing and cooking and pretty much anything you throw at them (Listeria, which is very bad for the pregnant lady, and shellfish toxins).

3) Mercury is likely the top concern for fish eaters, raw or otherwise. Mercury is a neurotoxin and is thought to be especially damaging to small children and developing fetuses. They type of mercury found in seafood is methylmercury, which can bioaccumulate through the food chain, meaning that large, long-lived, fish-eating (piscivorous) fish can store up high levels in their flesh. The worst offenders are tilefish, swordfish, king mackerel and shark species. Some kinds of tuna, including big eye, are high as well. Everyone agrees that mercury is bad, what is less clear are the acceptable levels of consumption.

[Excuse the obtuse amount of math to follow]

The FDA cut off for safety is 1 part per million ppm (or 1 microgram/per gram of fish), and the WHO safe intake limit is set at 1.6 micrograms per kilogram of body mass per week. This level is meant for all folks but was set to protect fetuses from excessive mercury poisoning via their mother’s meals.

According to the FDA, your average yellow fin tuna has .325 ppm or .325 ug mercury/gram of fish. An average 70 kilo lady could therefore eat 112 ug weekly of mercury, which is 344 grams or 12 ounces of yellow fin tuna. The EPA’s more stringent cut off is just 0.01 ug/kd per day or about 49 ug per week for the 70 kilogram lady...or about 5 ounces of yellow fin tuna.

So if a tuna maki roll has 3 ounces of tuna then you’d end up with 1.5 to 4 tuna rolls per week, depending on how conservative you feel.

Of course this is all dependent on those initial FDA measures of methylmercury concentrations being accurate for each species of fish reported. A recent survey of tuna rolls from Los Angeles sushi restaurants by the environmental organization GotMercury.org, found and average mercury concentration of 0.72 parts per million, which is a heck of a lot more than tuna is supposed to be.

4) Organic pollutants. Dioxins and PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyls) are industrial pollutants that accumulate in the fatty flesh of fishes (unlike mercury which binds to proteins). They are carcinogens and endocrine disruptors, can cause developmental and immune problems and just a whole lotta crap. Again, everyone knows they are bad, it’s just the concentration we have to worry about.

As they tend to be fat soluble, it’s the fatty salmon fish and friends that build up very high levels. A 2004 study by a group at the University at Albany, New York evaluated the levels of these compounds in farmed and wild salmon from different places around the world. They found high levels of these pollutants in farmed fish from around the globe, notably Scotland, the Faeroe Islands, Maine, Eastern Canada, Western Canada and Norway.

Based on EPA data on acceptable levels of consumption, the authors calculated safe number of monthly 8 ounce meals of the different fish. The worst fish are safe if you eat zero to half a meal per month. The least contaminated salmon were wild Coho, Pink and Chum salmon from BC and Alaska. Of those, the authors concluded that we can eat four to eight meals per month, or 32 to 64 ounces. Check out the graph comparing all samples here.

So if there are around 3 ounces of salmon in your average roll that means you could eat up to 31 rolls per month of the really good stuff and about 1 roll of the bad stuff (or none of the Scottish crap).

As with mercury, there is likely to be wide variation in pollutant levels and it’s hard to determine the safety of your sushi dinner at the restaurant. There is no doubt that wild is best, so ask your sushi chef. Especially if you live in Europe.

Pros

1) Omega-3, baby. Happy fatty fishes and seafood, such as salmon, are high in long chain omega-3 fatty acids (DHA and EPA) that have so many health benefits, I just cant’ bare to list them all. Okay fine: they reduce the risk of heart disease, they might help in warding off depression, they make for smart babies, less aggressive juvy prisoners, protect against and/or slow the progression of Alzheimer’s Disease, maybe even arthritis and other stuff and wow!

2) Worth the risk. Indeed omega-3s are SO very good for you, that last year researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health suggested that the benefits of eating fish (especially for the heart) outweighed the risks from contamination. While not everyone agreed with their optimistic interpretation of studies on the death-protective effects of eating loads ‘o fish, seeing as heart disease continues to be the number one killer in the US and Canada, I see their point.

Also, the study linked above on maternal fish consumption and child IQ showed that mothers who ate the most fish (more than 340 grams or 12 ounces of fish per week) had kids who scored highest on IQ tests. They also had showed the most prosocial (nice) behavior. Indeed the authors quite controversially suggest that the benefit of omega-3s on brain development during gestation outweighed the possible harm from the neurotoxic effects of mercury - though because actual mercury exposure levels were not measured, we can’t truly be sure of optimal level.

BONUS: Now here’s a special treat for all you inquisitive readers. Read this article on the “Dangers of Sushi” in the UK’s favorite tabloid newspaper, the Daily Mail and find all the factual errors! I’ve counted about seven so far, not including the dubious scare-tactic interpretations of actual facts.

Did any of you ever fantasize about learning through osmosis? The idea went something like this: By simply touching a biology textbook for instance, information would travel down the knowledge gradient and flow from the book into your very being. Well I figure surrounding yourself with science related things might just be the closest way of actually executing said nerdy (and lazy) fantasy. Hence our brand new category: material science.

Seriously if you stare at Simple Memory Art’s Weather System Shower curtain ($32) each day how could you not be able to recite the causes of weather at the drop of a hat?

For the truly committed (or loved ones of) there’s the Science Toy Club. A six month gift subscription costs $139 and sends you a “toy that is not only fun and nifty, but also demonstrates important scientific concepts” every month. What fun!

For little people (or big people with little maturity) check out Muji’s wooden evolution puzzle (£4.95). For those in North America, don’t fret. Muji’s flagship US store is slated to open in Manhattan in time for xmas. In the meantime, the MoMA store offers the next best thing: the Animal Alphabet Wooden Puzzle designed by Ferdinand Swart ($48). Hello cuteness.

And how delighted am I to see that Pushmepullyou design is having a Holiday Sale. Us Inky Circus gals loves seals (don’t believe me? See related ”Save our seals” November 15, 2007 and ”Seals for Science” February 23, 2006). So I really can’t order the baby seal t-shirt currently on sale ($10 + free shipping) fast enough.

I’ve just got word from Eleanor Grosch who is the genius behind Pushmepullyou that when she says “free shipping” she means “free shipping worldwide”. Damn!

What better way to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the smiley than to buy a cute pair of sterling earrings featuring our favorite emoticon ($12) made by Nicholas and Felice (see related ”So they’re all sold out for now but check back later… ” June 26, 2007).

The doorstop for the door that connects True North Gems’ laboratory with its safe room is a football-sized rock that resembles a jagged slab of Roquefort. When I ask company director Nick Houghton what it was he leans over and traces the veins of rich blue that streaked the creamy marble with his finger. “Well, that’s sapphire,” he replies, a bit surprised despite himself. “I never noticed that before,” he mutters as he nudged it with his foot. He swiftly strides on while I stand there agape. I’ve got a soft spot for sapphires; they’re my birthstone.

One could be excused for taking gems for granted here at the company’s office in downtown Vancouver. Over the past six years True North Gems has dug emeralds out of the Yukon and sapphires from Baffin Island all in a bid to augment the successful Canadian diamond industry with colored gemstones.

Despite these riches, True North Gems is focusing on its ruby-bearing property at the southern tip of Greenland. They’ve turned up 29 ruby outcrops on their 110 square kilometer claim in the Fiskenaesset district, located in the bottom left hand corner of Greenland. In summer 2006, bulk sampling of the most fruitful outcrop, affectionately called “Big Red,” yielded about 9,600 carats of ruby per ton of rock. The summer before, a company geologist tugged a 440-carat ruby out of its ground.

All That Glitters Up North

The frozen north is less barren than it is booming these days.  Since Canada’s first economic diamond deposit was found in 1991, Canada has rapidly risen to become the world’s third largest diamond producer. According to Indian and Northern Affairs Canada an area almost equal to that of the entire Yukon Territory has been staked out by prospecting permits in Nunavut, Canada’s largest and newest territory, over the past three years. The number of mineral exploration licenses granted by the Greenland Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum has more than doubled from 29 granted in 2006 to 63 in 2007.

Still, True North Gems is the only player with their sights set on Greenland’s rubies and as such, they are clocking firsts fast. This summer the company finished installing its upgraded gravity-processing plant in the village of Fiskenaesset. It’s a loud clanking outfit that crunches rocks and spits out a concentrate of ruby and pink sapphire. In June the Greenland Bureau of Mines and Petroleum approved the company’s application to explore another 713 square kilometer swath next to their ruby property (the actual license is still pending).

The company’s ultimate goal is to build a ruby mine, which will join a select few others that extract rubies from the very stone in which they crystallized some two billion years ago – as opposed to collecting the already loose rubies from glacial till. “What we’re seeing is material that we’ve liberated, not that Mother Nature’s liberated,” Houghton explains. He brings out a slab of the Greenland rock. Its shiny mica matrix is peppered with juicy rubies.

How best to extract the rubies is proving have a steep learning curve, but the perks of the locale make it worth the effort. First, the rubies are blood-free, which increases the appeal to ethical jewel lovers. Second, there is no surface vegetation or extraneous layers of stone to get in the way of mining. “It’s bare rock; as far as a geologist is concerned, it’s a dream,” Houghton says. “That,” he says, slapping the slab on his lap, “you’ll walk across!” Take a stroll on their property and odds are, you’ve trampled on a handful of precious gems.

The Recipe for Rubies

Ruby is a variety of the mineral corundum, made up of aluminum oxide that turns red thanks to traces of chromium (any other color of corundum – from pink to yellow to blue - is classified as sapphire). The trick is that corundum forms only in the absence of silicon, one of the most common elements in the earth’s crust. If there’s silica around, the earth makes garnet instead. Lining up the right temperature, pressure and ingredient list is a rare event, something that no doubt helps to drive the price of rubies up. In 2006 a 8.62 carat ruby sold at Christie’s St. Moritz for US $3.6 million, or $425,000 per carat.

Rubies can crystallize in hot magma as it cools or they can continue to grow over much more time in a deep hot spring environment in a process known as hydrothermal paragenesis. Over enough time, geological processes pushed the rubies up to where they’re exposed today on Greenland’s surface.

Applying the science of ruby geology has been a key to True North’s success says Richard Herd, Curator of the Geological Survey of Canada’s National Collections “This information has been known for some time, but no one’s really gone at it quite as carefully and quite as logically as they have”. Southeast Asia furnishes most of the world’s colored gem stones, but there are signs that its production is on a slight decline. In theory, says Herd, the geology of the Arctic is the same as those high-producing areas of Asia. “So the possibility that there is material there that will yield similar material to Southeast Asia is behind a lot of what is going on.”

So far their hunch appears to be a good one. In the summer of 2006, 88 kg of unpolished rubies were extracted from 30 tons of Aappaluttoq rock by diamond-toothed chainsaws, helicopters, crushers, gravity concentration, tumblers, and sieves. Next, eight pairs of eyes go over every stone separating the pink sapphires from the red rubies, the gems from the near-gems, the “specials” (AKA really big stones) from the large (4 mm) from the medium (2-4 mm) from the small (less than 2 mm), until all that’s left is a fine ruby sand. “It breaks my heart because we’ll just dump it,” says True North Gem’s Rejane Amaral, who leads the gem sorting. “Or maybe I could pave my sidewalk with it,” she muses, as her hand sifts through the company garbage.

Researchers say that owning a dog can lower your blood pressure. Think what this means. A hug to Rover may soothe your cardiovascular system more than a fistful of ACE inhibitors. A simple snuggle with Spot? Bring on the endorphins and sayonara to stress hormones.

Imagine if dogs found their way into the pharmaceutical marketplace. You might browse the PDR (Physicians Drug Reference) and see Canis familiaris under the generic listing for Prozac, as pooches, too, fight depression. Airlines might suggest passengers pack their pups in their carry-on luggage instead of sending them through as baggage.

Your family doctor might tell you to lose 10 pounds, but, instead of pulling out his pad and scrawling a prescription for buproprion or some such chemical fix, he might recommend a Heinz-69 canine. “Pick out a young, hyper one,” Doc might say. “Walk him every night for a month, and that extra weight will be history.”

Of course you must beware of the side effects: bassets can make you sleepy, and you’ve got to watch out for those drooling St. Bernards. Little dogs that yip and squeak like Chihuahuas and Pekinese can make you irritable and large dogs with super-size poop can set your olfactory glands back ten years.

If you’re lucky, your doctor might be well-read and knowledgeable. “Try a Miniature Schnauzer,” he might say. “They like nothing better than cuddling up next to you in bed.”

Still, you might be unsure whether the dog--somewhat of a semi-controlled substance--is a legitimate substitute for medication. A list of the pros and cons should put your mind to rest.

PROS

1. You may forget to take pills, but dogs will always remind you of their presence, usually by plastering your face with wet ones. By contrast, pills loaf around on the kitchen table or bathroom counter, daring you to remove their child-proof caps.

2. It’s more socially acceptable to play Frisbee with “Spot” than to remove a suspicious looking pill from a tiny container and gulp it down with a questionable beverage.

3. Pills require props--for example, a Perrier or a diet-cola. Petting your dog can be a one-handed affair--a bonus for Vegas gamblers. 

4. Pill prescriptions need to be refilled every month or so, but if you’re lucky, a good dog can last 10 to 15 years.

5. Pills are dead giveaways you are medically challenged. But dogs will keep the public guessing--e.g. Is Fifi a prescription or a pet?

6. Pills sometimes get misplaced in purses, drawers or attaché cases. Dogs, however, will instantly appear should a half-eaten Oreo accidentally fall onto the kitchen floor.

7. You run the risk of mistakenly receiving the wrong drug from your friendly pharmacist, but dogs always sniff out the right person.

CONS

1. You must first housebreak a dog before you can use him properly. This can take up to six years.

2. Dogs can have their “off” days, with cranky growls and mean-spirited nips.

3. Dogs frighten easily during thunderstorms, earthquakes and terrorist attacks. Some have been known to howl woefully or hide under the bed. On the other hand, pills stand calm and cool in medicine cabinets, peeking out courageously from behind the calamine lotion and dental floss.

4. Dogs are not as mobile or portable as we would like to think.  Should you go camping or RVing, they require a boxful of toys, their security blankies and their favorite treat. Pills require nothing more than the plastic containers they come in.

5. Dogs will not work 24/7.  Their schedules generally consist of12 hours of sleep, 2 hours of food consumption and 6 hours of chewing up your Prada pumps. That leaves one hour for therapy. Pills are ready to rumble any time.

6. As a pill-popper, you get to frequent New Age festivals and shop in trendy boutiques with names like “Wild Wheat” and “Health A-Go-Go.” Dogs do their best work during summer reruns.

7. Pill people are perceived as more intelligent than dog owners. It could be the glasses thing, but then again, it could be the standing-out-in-the rain-thing with an umbrella and plastic baggie.

So, that’s the story. What’s it gonna be? Pills or pups? Can’t commit? Then compromise. Use both, but check with your health insurance first. And, for your own safety, if there’s a deductible, for heaven’s sake, don’t tell Rover.

Two weekends ago I was visiting a dear friend in New England. She has just started a postdoctoral fellowship in Chemistry at an Ivy League University. She has also just started dating an engineering doctoral student at said ILU. They are very smitten. It was disgusting.

During one of their goodbye smooch sessions (while I was attempting to melt beneath the floorboards on my way out the door), my dear friend, let’s call her Judy, accidentally said “I love you” to the Engineer.

This was cause for great distress and she immediately “took it back.”

A few days later, consumed by the saying, taking back, and woefully lack of saying and taking back in return, Judy broached the subject with the Engineer (I was thankfully hanging out with my 21-year old cousin, who attends a nearby Liberal Arts University).

The Engineer, delightful and rational fellow that he is, made it clear that he would not be saying “I love you” until he was sure. Otherwise, he might waste this very important statement by saying it too early in the relationship, when his love was still growing rapidly, thereby taking away the significance in later weeks/months when his love was much, much greater.

Judy, obviously disappointed by this response, pressed and asked WHEN exactly that would be. His response: when dLove/dt = zero.

For those of you who have forgotten your calculus (or blocked it out, or, lucky you, never took it at all) let me explain: he will say “I love you” when the slope of the tangent to the growth curve of his love has reached zero. This indicates of a local maximum and means that the rate of growth (the velocity of love, as it were) has slowed to a stop.

As Judy and I were discussing his response, we found it concerning on several levels. Firstly, if the curve of his love is akin to figure (a) then after he says I love you, he will actually begin to love her less. Which bodeth not well for their long term relationship survival. So then, let’s be generous and suggest the curve of his love is better approximated by figure (b), where the plateau of zero growth might indicate the end of honeymoon/infatuation-type love (a bit late, but not a BAD time to say I love you), which then moves on promptly on to another growth phase, the build up of life-long-partnership-love and the having of babies.

But the second distressing aspect of the whole affair was that somewhere along the line Judy had also mentioned the term “second derivative.” And neither of us could actually remember what this was. We both recalled HOW to take a second derivative (indeed Judy and I took calculus together many years ago), but we couldn’t remember what it actually meant.

Enter massive calculus textbook from our 1st year class (Judy hates throwing away text books).

After searching in the index and finding some helpful examples, we remembered that AHA! the second derivative is akin to acceleration: the rate of rate of growth. And by solving for the second derivative - d2 (love)/dt2 - we could ensure that when d(love)/dt = 0, it is a local maximum (the greatest love), not a local minimum (not the greatest love of all). For when the second derivative is negative = local maximum, as in figure (a); when positive, it’s a local minimum, as in figure (c) (Refresh your memory here). All is happy.

But, you see, I have come up with a better solution. The first few weeks or months of a relationship often result in a very rapid growth of love. Indeed you could even say love is accelerating at a break necking pace (oh har, sorry) not merely speeding along in a linear fashion. Of course this psychotic rampage in love growth can only continue apace for so long and eventually the acceleration will drop to zero, though the absolute value of love is still growing - ie the velocity or d(love)/dt is still greater than zero. An exemplary graph of said derivative can be seen in figure (d).

Try this math teacheresque example; it’s like Judy and the Engineer have the pedal to metal, building up speed along the on ramp to the freeway of love. But once they merge on, and find a nice lane, they can continue traveling at a constant rate, save for pit stops (fights) and the occasionally passing of trucks (make-up sex).  Or better yet, let’s say that falling in love is really actually like falling, wherein the acceleration = 9.8 meters per second squared. When you finally slam into the ground (or reach terminal velocity, which ever suits your particular romantic scenario) and start acting like a normal human beings, instead of a driveling, love-crazed sociopaths, then you know its really time to start saying “I love you.”

In either case, the Engineer should in fact solve for zero in the second derivative to the love-time function and say “I love you” when love has stopped accelerating. This solves the concerning problem of having to wait until his love has stopped growing. Because zero growth in the love function is likely to make any woman, chemist, calculus enthusiast or otherwise, pretty goddamn pissed off.

After the fun part of baby making comes the hard part. Not the labor, the diaper-changing, or the child-rearing, but the intricate division of cells and genesis of an embryo. This is the most fragile time in development. This is the time when a mother is most likely to lose her child. This is when she is mostly likely to miscarry.

According to a classic medical textbook, Williams’ Obstetrics, 12-26% of all clinically recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage. One study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1988 found that 31% of pregnancies ended in miscarriage, also called spontaneous abortion. 

Yet despite knowing of this risk, when my first pregnancy ended abruptly in October 2006, I was stunned and totally unprepared. It was just before my 26th birthday and I was over 11 weeks along, but my doctor estimated that the fetus had died at eight weeks. 

I was vaguely aware that the first trimester of pregnancy is dicey, and that I should wait until the second trimester to tell the world that I was pregnant. But the harsh statistics eluded me until I became one.

The experience drove me to understand the causes behind miscarriage, how it can be prevented, and ultimately, why no one – not doctors, friends, colleagues or even my own mother – had prepared me for this traumatic possibility. 

In truth, it’s a wonder that babies are ever born, given the intricate molecular machinery and trillions of delicate steps that must work like clockwork in order to succeed.

First, the sperm has to find the egg and combine with it to make a new human cell, the zygote. All of the estimated 100 trillion human cells in your body arise from this zygote. Every time the zygote divides - into two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two cells and more - 23 pairs of chromosomes must replicate, untangle and share their halves evenly between pairs of splitting cells. Pieces of DNA can be torn off, mutated or left behind. 

The newly split cells must also differentiate. Each one turns on or off different genes to become a specialized cell type - heart, skin, brain or muscle. This requires exacting regulation on the part of master genes. Molecular messages that coordinate the process can trigger an immune response from the mother’s body, attacking the budding being as it grows.

Miscarriage, or fetal death before 20 to 24 weeks of gestation, is most often an unavoidable consequence of this process of cell division, differentiation and growth.

In most cases, the exact cause remains unknown. Of the miscarriages that have been studied, at least half are due to fetal chromosomal abnormalities, again according to Williams. Still other developmental defects can occur in the zygote, embryo or fetus that will cause miscarriage. 

Miscarriage can come in many forms, including complete (fetus dies and body expels it), delayed (fetus dies and body does not yet expel it), or incomplete (some tissue passes but some remains in utero). 

If the woman’s body does not complete the miscarriage, there are ways to remove the tissue; you can take a pill called misoprostol that stimulates uterine contractions and tissue expulsion within 24 hours. This is what I elected to do, and although it was quite painful (it was essentially a preview to labor), I was at home and in control. Alternatively, you can undergo a minor outpatient surgical procedure called a D & C, which stands for dilation and curetage. For this, you are locally or sometimes generally anesthetized while your cervix is dilated and the tissue manually removed. Physical recovery is typically only a day or two. Finally, you often have the option to wait a week or two for your body to take care of things itself, unless there is a risk for infection. 

For most women, miscarriage should be considered a normal part of reproduction rather than a devastating failure at pregnancy. There are, however, known factors that increase the risk. Age is among the strongest. A February 2007 study of 603 women led by Noreen Maconochie at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that women over 35 were 75% more likely to miscarry than women aged 25-29 years. 

Women of any age can reduce their risk by avoiding tobacco and alcohol. Maconochie showed that women who drank everyday had 319% (or about three times) the risk of miscarrying than women who drank less than once per week or not at all. The 2007 paper also showed that stress, partner change, and previous pregnancy termination were factors that contributed to miscarriage risk. 

Happiness and a healthy diet (lots of fruit and vegetables, especially) reduced the chance of miscarrying. Caffeine, though often cited on other studies of miscarriage risk factors, didn’t seem to have any affect on this group of women. 

Yet even armed with this new information, I kept wondering - if miscarriage is so common and generally unavoidable, why wasn’t I informed? 

It wasn’t for lack of opportunity. Doctors and educators have plenty of chances to present this fact of life to young women: 4th grade coming-of-age class, high school sex ed, a woman’s first pelvic exam, or her first prenatal appointment. 

I found out about miscarriage when the doctor couldn’t find my baby’s heartbeat on the ultrasound. It was too late. With nearly a one in four chance of it happening to me, I am certain that I would have preferred to be exposed to the possibility of miscarriage before it happened. 

Motivated by frustration at my own naivete, I began sharing my miscarriage story and urging other women to tell me theirs. Nearly every woman I know who has children had at least one miscarriage. Even my mom had one, but before my experience I had no idea what that meant, how it was resolved, how she felt about it. My mom’s miscarriage came after three normal pregnancies, and she said that the miscarriage was the hardest labor of them all, both physically and mentally. It was comforting to talk to her about miscarriage and to bond in our shared experience. 

Why don’t women talk about miscarriage with other women? Is it because women move on, have babies, and talk about them? Or perhaps women have some latent insecurity about miscarriage, despite the fact that it is completely normal? Maybe that’s the problem: young women aren’t informed because no one talks about it; therefore when it happens we feel anything but normal. 

It is our responsibility to share our miscarriage experiences with women of all ages. If not to expand our personal support network then to inform women when doctors won’t. You or someone you know will experience the one in four, so the least we can do is educate each other. 

Heather’s family is about to expand, as she is happily awaiting the arrival of her first child in October of 2007.  Although she is no stranger to outreach, this is her first attempt at using the written word and owes a debt of gratitude to Christine Mlot, without whom this essay would not have been published.

So, were you one of the horrid masses who stepped on a plane this summer? You were? Shame on you. If you read the newspapers, you would know that flying (the dirty F-word) is about as good for the planet as smog is for asthmatics. 

Air travel has become the new environmental no-no. We in the UK are constantly bombarded with propaganda about how flying is the new preserve of climate criminals, that each flight is another twist of the knife in the back of Mother Earth. Those of us that choose to fly are denounced as environmental hooligans, no better than George Bush and his oil-hungry cronies.

As George Monbiot in the Guardian put it succinctly: “Flying across the Atlantic is now as acceptable as child abuse.”

The headlines tell the same story: “Aviation is the fastest growing cause of climate change and a major threat to the earth and everything on it” – this from a UK anti-aviation pressure group, Plane Stupid.

These statements reflect the prevailing attitude of many commentators. But is flying really that bad? Compared to composting, sure. But when you look at the numbers of how we pollute, planes just aren’t as sky high as they’d like us to believe.

Admittedly, in the UK we love to fly. Just last month British Airways announced a 5.3% increase in passenger numbers for this August compared to last year. British Airways carried 3.1 million people around the globe last month alone, and a massive 14.8 million people last year.

Budget airlines like Easy Jet and Ryan Air have dramatically increased the numbers of UK fliers jaunting around Europe to boot. Between 1999 and 2006 Easy Jet increased its yearly passenger numbers from 3.1 million to nearly 33 million.

But the media message on flying is starting to work. Recent surveys have suggested that 13% of Britons have already altered their air travel habits as a result of the media onslaught against flying. Last month 2,000 people attended a week-long “Camp for Climate Action” outside London’s Heathrow airport, with the intention to disrupt British Airways and draw attention to impact that aviation has on climate change.

Politicians are beginning to jump on the bandwagon, too. The World Bank, UK members of parliament, and major political parties have suggested enormous green taxes on air travel. Just this week, David Cameron, leader of the UK opposition Conservative Party endorsed a massive report by millionaire environmentalist Zac Goldsmith that highlighted the need for taxes on short-haul flights.

We need to reduce fossil fuel use, and quickly. But let’s all retain a sense of perspective here on where we need to direct those cuts:

• According to the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), aviation accounts for around 2% of global anthropogenic (man-made) carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere. Power generation contributes a hefty 24%. Other major contributors are deforestation, agriculture and industry. The predicted ‘massive rise’ in global air travel will probably only cause aviation to be accountable for 3% of global CO2 emissions by 2050, according to 1999 predictions by the IPCC.

• Modern airliners can be efficient ways to travel. Per person, the new and ultra-efficient Airbus A380 emits 75 grams of CO2per kilometer traveled. Compare this with 138 grams of CO2/km for a Mini. The A380 is only slightly less efficient even than the ‘poster-boy’ of environmentally responsible travel, the train (which emits 60 grams of CO2/km).

• Wearing clothes is a large cause of anthropogenic CO2 emission. A recent study by the Carbon Trust found that, of the 11 tons of CO2 emitted by the average Briton in a year, 1 ton was related directly to that person’s clothing. This figure takes into account the emissions from manufacture of the clothes, transportation to the retailer, and all the associated washing and drying which (most of us) put our garments through. Contrast this emission from clothes with an average 0.68 tons of CO2 released from the flights a British person will make in a year.

So, by any sane measure, we should all walk round naked and boycott Minis.

It is true that aviation, like any other sector, needs to do its bit to help fight climate change.  It’s also true that carbon emitted from the airline industry has nearly twice the warming effect of other greenhouse gases because it is emitted so high in the atmosphere.  But there is hope and scope for improvement. According to US Air Transport Association president and CEO James May, US air carriers have improved average fuel efficiency by 44 percent since 1990. Although there is still no alternative to jet fuel or kerosene.

Virgin Atlantic chairman Richard Branson has proposed a number of initiatives to reduce CO2 emissions from aviation, including advocating aircraft take a continuous descent approach in to airports, cutting the extra fuel that a staggered approach uses; and reducing aircraft weight and optimizing the routes that the aircraft take to reduce fuel consumption.

So I won’t feel guilty when I fly to the States on holiday this year. And, yes, I will offset the resultant carbon emission. But don’t get me started on THAT subject, I’ll leave it for another article….

The United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is a majestic place.  A place of tremendous history and natural beauty. But before you decide to move house, consider the following:

Damp, moldy homes may increase the risk for depression. And boy does the UK know damp? They had one of the soggiest summers on record. It rained nearly 400mm in some places between May 22 and the end of July. That’s damp.

There has been a surge in the case of measles here, an oh-so predictable outcome of parents refusing to vaccinates their babies after the whole Autism-MMR vaccine scare. Run for the hills. I mean doctor’s office.

Typhoid is also making a comeback in the UK, mostly because un-vaccinated tourists acquire it while abroad in exotic destinations and then bring it round to share. How nice. Next time just bring some coconut candies.

Speaking of tourists, Britain’s so-called ‘health tourists’, people who come to use the nearly free health care system here (it’s true, no one asks you for insurance or ID or anything), threaten to bankrupt the floundering National Health Service.  They even considered telling airlines from parts of Africa and Asia to ban heavily pregnant women from flying to the UK. Yikes.

Not to mention that the Brits are getting as fat as Americans and even their children drink like fishes.

AND AND AND. My tube line is shut down in the evenings for engineering works and and a Tube Strike started today at 5pm. That’s certainly enough to make you want to fling yourself in front of a car, which I am convinced cannot be good for your health.

*Inkling magazine and its editors would like to remind you that this is a humorous column. Anna does not really believe the UK is in the dark ages - one look at the searing brightness of the f’d up US health care would convince her of that. She might have to eat some Twiglets to recover from her daily existence here, however.  And no, she refuses to admit that this entire column was spurred on by dislike of her transit situation. That would be petty.

What does it take to make food taste good? McDonald’s printed paper, of course. In a study of 63 children aged three to five, Stanford researchers found that kids said chicken nuggets, burgers, fries, carrots and milk tasted better when wrapped in McDonald’s packaging compared to identical food in similar, but unbranded, bags and paper.

Women who get breast implants are three times more likely to commit suicide, reports one study that tracked women for 19 years of follow up. Insert appropriate can’t buy happiness/real beauty is on the inside aphorism.

Race might only be skin deep, but when it comes to doling out the death penalty, it goes much further. A recent study of 1,560 people sentenced to death from 1973 to 2000 found that blacks who kill white people are the most likely to have their sentence actually carried out, instead of overturned on appeal.

Cancer drug Rituximab is now a deadly skin-lesion auto-immune disease fighter too! Pharma giant Roche must be so pleased. 

Using DVDs to smarten up babies might actually make them dumber. I mean shocking. Really. Shocking. Because I totally thought that staring at stuff was better than interacting with other humans, hearing them speak, and trying to talk back.

It seems that women, er, really DO like muscled men – at least for flings ‘n’ stuff. One study of UCLA undergraduates found that the burly blokes were more likely to have three or more sexual partners and were twice as likely to have had flings and one night stands. Amen.

Alarmed by your unsightly sweating? Well now doctors can literally SUCK YOUR SWEAT GLANDS OUT. Like with a needle. Just like liposuction. Ew.

David Walker used to think being a cell biologist was serious work. That was until he began to paint. 

“Art gives me a way of looking at the architecture of life,” the associate professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia says over the phone from his Vancouver west side home. “[It] allows you to sort of translate the feelings that come from the biology into something easier to share with people.” The 61-year-old’s most recent sculptures will be exhibited at the VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver this August.

Walker picked up painting after a close friend of his passed away without pursuing his own interest in art about 20 years ago. Before long Walker had signed up for an intensive sculpting class that eventually led him to take a marble-carving course in the Colorado town of, yes that’s right, Marble. These days Walker still teaches at the university but spends each Saturday at his very first sculpting teacher’s studio, chiseling and chipping away.

“Medicine envelops him,” says Carmen Lasley, of the Sculptors’ Society of British Columbia, who credits Walker’s sense of discipline for his development as a sculptor over the past seven years. Walker’s understanding of dynamic living things and his portrayal of them in static stone are informed by his background in biology, says Lasley.

Over the course of his three-decade scientific career Walker has taken nearly 20,000 negatives of cells and tissues. He’s even modeled in clay the complexities of white blood cell migration to the lungs to help him understand it. “The science has dribbled over into the art stuff,” he explains.

Just last year Walker began to carve a piece of marble the size of a gym locker into a Golgi apparatus (pictured above). He hopes to install this macroscopic interpretation of a cell’s packaging plant in a public fountain. “Most people who see a Golgi apparatus have no idea what they’re looking at, but if they see it and see it as beautiful then they don’t need to understand it – though understanding it deepens your experience of it – they just need to appreciate it.”

These days Walker sculpts alabaster and marble from photographic images to share his own sense of wonder at the world, be it wonderment at what he calls “living through the eyes” or fascination with the architecture of life. His interpretation of the natural world, represented, say, by cellular structures or the human form, highlight the beauty of the commonplace.

When Walker teaches medicine or pathology, he is storytelling – verifiable and replicable stories to be sure – to give meaning to life. To him, science is an asymptotic story that never quite reaches the truth.

As a teacher, he helps his students use scientific tools for storytelling. As an artist he uses painting and sculpture to convey the feelings that the language of science can’t quite express. 

David Walker will be exhibiting recent work at VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver from August 4 to 6, 2007.

Now I don’t know about you, but growing up (emphasis on the growing) in Vancouver, we were always told that smoking pot was better for you than smoking cigarettes; the addictive nicotine, the evil chemical preservatives, weed is all natural goodness, dude, Alllll natural. Too bad that smoking one joint is like FIVE TIMES worse for your little lungs than a cigarette. And then there’s that pesky risk of psychotic mental illnesses later in life. Whoops.

Blue corn tortilla chips – with their antioxidants, higher protein and lower starch content – are, like HEALTHY. You know, like better for dieters and diabetics. Totally. Corn chips are a part of every healthy diet.

US doctors who see religion as a “master motive in their lives” are not more likely to care for the poor than other doctors..actually they are little LESS likely to waste their valuable time (aka money) on under-served patients. This, despite their religion calling them to serve the poor and “treat” others as they would wish to be treated.  I mean, WWJD?

Doctors at the CDC were apparently surprised to find that among underage drinkers, of which there are many (I mean the US drinking age is 21 for Pete’s sake), hard liquor is the most popular beverage. Pshaw. Of course. Do you know HOW much beer you have to drink to get wasted enough to fall down and puke through your nose? A lot. It’s a bit of a pain, really. It’s just like my daddy would say, “candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.”

In a case of a useful delusion, it seems that merely having a good attitude about exercise makes intense workouts less painful. I think this pretty much explains my problem.

The immense benefits of having a helpful grandmother has been touted as the reason that women live so long past the age of reproduction. But where, exactly, does that leave grandfathers? Off playing shuffleboard, apparently.

Grandmothers are a powerful evolutionary force. Studies of present day communities in Africa and historical communities in Finland and Quebec have found that having a living grandmother around to protect, care and collect food for grandchildren can significantly increase the survival of grandchildren and, subsequently the number of grandchildren that a woman leaves behind.  Anthropologists suggest this grandmother effect explains why women evolved to live so long after menopause, and even why women quit reproducing in the first place - an idea called the Grandmother Hypothesis.

When it comes to explanations for male longevity, however, biologists usually assume it stems from the fact that men can keep sowing their seed well into old age; men in many traditional human societies put less biological effort into child rearing (by not having to give birth, for one), and can continue having children by marrying younger, fertile women. But that explanation only works in societies where men have multiple wives; life-long monogamy means that once the grandmother stops having children, grandpa has no means to increase his fitness by merely fathering more children. So grandfathers in monogamous societies might boost the number of their genes left to future generation by being helpful childminders like their wives.

To test this hypothesis, Mirkka Lahdenpera at the University of Turku in Finland (who had previously investigated grandmothering in Finland) and her colleague examined extensive church records from 1719-1839 in three separate Finnish communities. They used life-history traits that they argued would make for a more accurate assessment of grandfatherly benefits: the age when a son or daughter gives birth to the first grandchild; the time between births of grandchildren, total number of grandchildren or son/daughter reproductive success. 

The results showed no real benefit of having living grandfathers, write the authors. “ Overall, in contrast to our results for women in the same population, men do not gain extra fitness (i.e. more grandchildren) through grandfathering. Our results suggest that if evidence for a ‘grandfather’ hypothesis is lacking in a monogamous society, then its general importance in shaping male lifespan during our more promiscuous evolutionary past is likely to be negligible.”

So if grandfathering doesn’t keep men alive so long, what does? Must be all that shuffleboard.

It makes for unusual reading in a dating column:

Lonely male, 70 to 80 years old, shriveled throwback to Cretaceous period, WLTM female sharing at least half own genetic material for fun & frivolous times preserving his species.

Such an ad can only refer to “Lonesome George,” the last known example of the Abingdon or Pinta Island species of the Galápagos tortoise (Geochelone abingdonii). According to the Guinness Book of Records, George is the world’s rarest living creature.

Now a recent analysis of DNA of several tortoise species has suggested that a suitable mate might yet be found – a revelation that has conservation biologists more optimistic about George than they’ve been in decades.

George, you see, has done very little to help himself. Since he was found in 1971 on Pinta, he has been penned up with two females from a related species (from Isabela Island), in the hope that he will pass on his rare genes to his progeny. In the succeeding three and a half decades, however, he has shown little interest in sowing his seed.

The reason for George’s supreme rarity is quite simple: Visitors in previous centuries held the unfortunate and antiquated notion that killing and stuffing the local wildlife, in particular the ponderous tortoises, would somehow benefit the cause of science. To add to the woes of George’s ancestors the sailors pickled and ate the specimens they did not stuff (they are, by all accounts, quite delicious). The individuals that escaped the seafarers’ ravages survived in the isolated parts of the outer islands, and were only discovered after the Galápagos fauna and flora were afforded proper protection in the late 1950s.

Today, George resides at the Charles Darwin Research Station on the island of Santa Cruz, where he has lived since 1972. Despite being more than 70 years old, George is in good health and, given the fact that he could live 120–200 years in total, is probably in his prime. Not that you could tell by his sex drive, says Michael Russello, at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, who has been working hard to find George a date. “Even after 35 years, Lonesome George seems uninterested in passing on his unique genes and has failed to produce offspring. The continuing saga surrounding the search for a mate has positioned Lonesome George as a potent conservation icon, not just for Galápagos, but worldwide.”

Thanks to the work of a team led by Russello things are finally looking up. George’s “ideal companion” would be another individual of his own species. And while a full-blood female has yet to be found, Russello’s team identified a male on Isabela who shares approximately half of George’s genes. Their finding, published in Current Biology in May, raised conservation workers’ hopes that there may be a pure Pinta tortoise among the 2,000 individuals on Isabela. Similar genetic diagnostics might also be used on captive animals in zoos around the world. The hunt is on.

But there is still the question of whether George will mate, no matter how perfect the partner. Male tortoises usually attempt to copulate with just about anything, even dead turtles, says Peter Pritchard, founder of a privately funded conservation group in Florida called the Chelonian Research Institute. Perhaps George has never witnessed a natural mating and has no idea what to do. And is he even biologically capable anymore? According to this article from the Tortoise Trust, George’s sexual organs may have already dried up from years of disuse. The last, stopgap effort would be artificial insemination – but attempts in the mid 90s to collect sperm from George failed.

Of course it’s possible that the right lady will really turn him on. Maybe he could try match.com. Just tell him not to send in any pictures.

Ad campaigns proclaim through white-mustachioed celebrities: “Milk: It does a body good.” This bovine-born best friend of cupcakes, this basis of cheese, this bedfellow of cereal is also the bedrock of nutrition in many cultures. Indeed the human love affair with dairy goes back thousands of years to our very dawn as farmers and animal-keepers. Our love of milk is stamped on our genome.

Of course today, in a world bursting with Haagen Dazs, Kraft singles and industrial agriculture, eating dairy may be less survival tool and more dangerous indulgence. To many, the creamy white liquid is a nutritional nightmare: a source of deadly chemicals and the root of allergies, inflammation and behavioral problems. But fount of goodness or drink of the damned, milk and mankind have forged a bond unlikely to break anytime soon.

Cattle were domesticated some 8,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent of the Near East. While it was originally thought that the practice originated in this area and then spread, there is evidednce that Africans likely independently domesticated cattle. Indeed, the harsh scrublands of Africa were likely ideal climes for dairy drinking to flourish, says anthropologist Diane Gifford-Gonzalez of the University of California, Santa Cruz. “You can’t farm the savanna,” she says. Dairy was just a natural progression of rearing cattle in an area where agriculture was impossible and food scarce.

If water was lacking or polluted, milk was a cleaner alternative. If food was lacking, milk was the perfect energy drink, loaded with fat, protein and carbohydrates.

However grand the benefits of lifelong dairy drinking, it did present the human digestive system with a problem. Babies are born with the right tools for drinking milk – specifically, the enzyme lactase, which breaks down the milky sugar lactose. But as we grow up, lactase production tapers off. An estimated 50–75% of the world’s population cannot easily digest milk, ice cream or cheese. Instead they live on yogurt and other fermented dairy products that have little lactose.

So communities that thrived on milk just had to evolve. According to studies by Mark Thomas of University College London and Sarah Tishkoff at the University of Maryland, when northern Europeans and tribal East Africans settled into cattle rearing, they developed several mutations that kept the lactase gene churning away into adulthood.

Tishkoff found that pastoral African populations developed the mutation between 3,300 and 4,500 years ago. Thomas found that in northern Europeans, mutations conferring lactose tolerance arose about 7,000 years ago.

The mutations conferred a distinct survival advantage – being able to drink milk kept them alive and hydrated, says Tishkoff. And to this day, says Gifford-Gonzalez, many cultures still depend on milk as a primary nutrition source, partially explaining why lactase mutations carry over from generation to generation. “If cows disappeared, folks like us would not be fazed, but other groups would be extinct in no time,” she says.

Our intimate coevolution with dairy suggests there is nothing more natural than a squirt of milk on your breakfast – at least if you have the right genetics to enjoy it. Of course the Western relationship with dairy foods has changed. Water quality and food scarcity are no longer an issue in the West, says Gifford-Gonzalez. So milk may now be more of a supplement than a staple – and its popularity is waning. According to the USDA, per capita consumption of beverage milk in 2000 was down 38% since the 1950s (from 36 gallons per year to 23).

The milk we drink doesn’t look much like the body-temperature beverage enjoyed by our ancestors, fresh from the teat. It’s processed, pasteurized, defatted, dried, sugared and stuffed with chemicals. It can still do a body good – but there’s some bad stuff too.

So while it may have saved our ancestors from famine and disease, what does milk do for us today?

THE GOOD:
Promotes weight loss
A 2004 study by Michael Zemel at the University of Tennessee found that obese people who ate a high-dairy diet lost more weight than those on a low-dairy diet. The authors thought it was the increased calcium that promoted fat loss. However, this study lost a lot of steam when it was revealed that it was sponsored by the National Dairy Council. But just this week, a new study from the UK found that men who drank a least a pint of milk (and also ate lots of cheese and yogurt), were 62% less likely to have metabolic syndrome (short hand for obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease).

Fights osteroporosis
Milk is a source of calcium, which is good for the bones. The National Academy of Sciences says healthy adult women aged 19 to 50 should consume 1,000 milligrams of calcium a day. But the Harvard School of Public Health says results of the long-term Nurses Health Study shows no difference in broken bones, regardless of calcium consumed. In Asia and India, calcium intake is lower with no adverse effect on bone health, and now in Britain, the recommended calcium dose has been lowered to 700 milligrams.

Fights PMS
The long-term Harvard University Nurses Health Study suggests that mood swings associated with PMS are lower in women who drink milk. The study was published in 2005 in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Anxiety, irritability and sadness were reported less by women in the study. However, the study was sponsored in part by a pharmaceutical company that makes calcium supplements.

Fights cancer
A meta-analysis published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 2004 showed a link between increased milk and calcium consumption and lowered colon cancer. Another large study of the Netherlands Cohort Group looked specifically at yogurt and colon cancer in 1994, since many studies have suggested bacteria in yogurt is good for health. The study found no link between increased yogurt consumption and decreased colon cancer.

Contains uber-good conjugated linoleic acid
A 1994 study in Cancer Research showed a diet including conjugated linoleic acid (from dairy) reduced mammary tumors in rats. Preliminary work published in 2000 in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition showed conjugated linoleic acid keeps cholesterol from packing up in rabbit arteries. A 2005 study from the University of Wisconsin - Madison also found that CLA fights harmful inflammation and immune response in rodents.

Has lots of vitamins
Vitamin A, a member of the carotenoid family, is found as retinol in milk, and is added to lowfat and skim milk. It helps with things like night vision and healthy skin and teeth. Naturally occurring amounts of vitamin D, plus the 300 to 400 international units usually added, help prevent osteoporosis and may help prevent breast cancer, according to a Brigham and Women’s Hospital study from 2007 in Archives of Internal Medicine.

THE BAD:

High in artery-clogging saturated fat
A cup of whole milk has 5 grams of saturated fat and 66 milligrams of cholesterol; a cup of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, at least 20 grams of saturated fat and 130 milligrams of cholesterol. The link between saturated fat and heart disease is well established, and accordingly, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends no more that 20 grams of saturated fat each day and no more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol.

Has evil chemicals
Modern cattle farming relies on getting as many animals as possible into the smallest space possible. Where there is crowding, there is disease. Antibiotics keep cows healthy but might boost the evolution of resistant superbugs. Hormones, such as bovine growth hormone (BGH) or insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) encourage cows to produce more milk, but may harm our own delicate hormonal balance. Poisonous pesticides are often residual in cow feed and can be passed through to milk. Organic milk is usually free of all these chemicals, but can cost double the price of “regular” milk.

Causes a common allergy
Milk allergy in infants is often misdiagnosed as gastrointestinal reflux disease or colic, says a 2005 Pediatric Nursing study. Most kids outgrow the allergy, but those that don’t can have diarrhea, vomiting, eczema, runny or stuffy nose, coughing and wheezing, amongst other symptoms. Finding a good diagnostic tool – other than making the kid drink milk and seeing what happens – remains a challenge. And of course, many people are intolerant to the sugar lactose and suffer their love of cheese accordingly.

What if the reason you were attracted to someone wasn’t because of good looks or intelligent conversation, but smell? We’re not talking a good perfume here – just natural chemical signals that you sniff out entirely subconsciously. They draw you in, excite you, make your heart twitterpate.

It might sound a little mad, but scientists believe that subconscious behavioral responses to these communicative scents, called pheromomes, happen on a regular basis, in a variety of situations, to a multitude of species. And now, after years of debate over whether we have the right olfactory equipment to process pheromonal cues, evidence is mounting that these scents are at work in people.

Pheromones do all kinds of things: for example bees release pheromones when attacked by a predator, triggering aggression in neighboring bees. Ants mark trails with pheromones to lead them from food to nest. Sex pheromones are, of course, particularly interesting. The first was described in 1956 in the silkworm; just one sniff of a particular protein excreted by the female worms (or butterflies, actually), sent the males’ wings a flappin.

Even today, the best examples of sex pheromones come from insects, because their behavior is generally quite stereotypical – even if their courtship itself is quite bizarre.

Take the common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. For an insect with only four pairs of chromosomes (compared to our own 23 pair), fruit flies have a courtship ritual that outshines even the most elaborately planned dinner date. One of the most in-depth studies of fruit-fly courtship and mating comes from Jeffrey Hall of Brandeis University. In 1994, in the journal Science, Hall described how the male fruit fly notices the female and begins to “tap” her abdomen and follow her around, showing his interest.  Often, the male extends and vibrates his wing, producing the “love song” that launches a thousand maggots, so to speak.

If the female is receptive (i.e., she doesn’t skedaddle), the male engages in a kind of foreplay (touching her genitalia) before attempting to copulate. If the male fruit fly does not vibrate his wing fast enough, if he is too slow overall, or if he’s an unusual color, the female will almost certainly not mate with him.

The complex nature of the dance raises many questions; how do the males know which female to go for? And how do the females fend off the advances of other males once they’ve already mated?

It seems that females emit a pheromone which, combined with the right pheromone receptor in males, keeps things organized during these courtship displays. The pheromone, 11-cis-vaccenyl acetate (or ‘cVA’ for short), is unique. It’s the equivalent of an “I’m taken” sign, or a wedding ring. Olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) in the males detect the pheromone prompting them to steer clear of the taken ladies and move on to the single ones.

This simple yet effective dating system was described by Aki Ejima and his colleagues at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland in the April 2007 issue of Current Biology. 

But the tidiness of these results all but disappears when the pathway short-circuits, suggesting we haven’t put together all the pieces of the Drosophila love match. If male fruit flies lack ORNs, they start chasing OTHER males around and attempt to copulate with them. The normal males run for their lives.

If we haven’t got a handle on simple, well-studied creatures like flies, what of more complex organisms, such as humans? For starters, many physiologists doubt whether we even possess the necessary nose to detect pheromones. In all other mammals, pheromone detection takes place in a deep portion of the nasal cavity called the vomeronasal organ. Studies from the 1940s found that most adult humans did not have such an organ deep in their nose and in those that did (25% or thereabouts), it was just a useless remnant of evolutionary history. 

But there is overwhelming evidence that some smells affect our behavior profoundly. The most famous example is probably the research of Martha McClintock of the University of Chicago. In her 1971 paper in the journal Nature, she argued that women’s menstrual cycles become synchronized when they live in proximity, and that this is due to unconscious odor cues, or pheromones.

Several other studies also suggest that pheromones are at work on a daily basis in people. For example women tend to prefer the smell of sweat-drenched T-shirts from men who differ from them in an important set of immunity genes. The theory is that such opposites-attract pairs would have kids with particularly diverse, and hence well-armed, immune systems.

Likewise, women tend to prefer the scent of manly, dominant men during their fertile phase. Men prefer the smell of women’s sweaty T-shirts worn during their more fertile menstrual phase. Heterosexual and homosexual men and women show strikingly different patterns of body odor preferences, and even the presence of biological fathers in a young girl’s life can affect the age at which she sexually matures.

However encouraging these behavioral studies are, researchers still come up dry in the hunt for the chemical pathways involved.

But there is new hope. A 2006 study published in Nature by Stephen Liberles and (nosy Nobel Prize Winner) Linda Buck of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute seemingly found pheromone receptors in the normal part of mice noses - no vomeronasal organ required. These receptors, called trace amine-associated receptors, or TAARs respond to compounds in mouse urine. Two such chemicals are present in different concentrations in male and female urine and one has been linked to the maturation rate of females. The genes that encode TAARs are also found in the human genome.

Though it is early days, this recent study shows that humans may yet show evidence of pheromones, perhaps even sex pheromones, and we may finally be able to keep up with the fruit fly when it comes to understanding sex.

Uninsured Americans cost Medicare on average 51% more in medical expenses, compared people with insurance previous to the 65-year-old enrollment age. The majority of excess costs came from treatment for chronic conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, whose pricey ER treatment can largely be cut with preventative medicine earlier in life. If, like, they had some frickin’ health care.

Health researchers have often complained that shitty food (chips n’ candy) are cheaper than good foods (ie vegetables, whole grains and lean meats), meaning that poor people eat bad diets and end up with bad health. So why not just tax the crap food? A study from Oxford University suggests that a “fat tax” equivalent to the sales tax already paid on non-food goods (VAT) could cut 3200 deaths
from heart attacks/strokes per year.

OR…..you could just build some bigger grocery stores in poor areas what with their better selection of healthy meats and grains, and overall lower prices.

OR….you could stop subsidizing the production of high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soybean oil..

Tax-payers in the US are likely to pay a little bit more for the CDC’s service (including my favorite Death Map application) because $22 million in equipment has been tiefed.

A new bill signed into law on Friday will likely raise the cost of an abortion in Missouri, because people MIGHT HAVE TO CROSS STATE LINES TO GET ONE. Not to mention they are probably more likely to need one, because the same bill, which may force the closure of some Planned Parenthood clinics, bars educators from the organization from stepping inside classrooms or providing sex ed materials (because they could just be trying to drum up some abortion business). Cool.

Thinking of buying your kid a trampoline for her birthday? Shocked at the price of a stretchy plastic tarp and some steel coils? Well better factor in the price of an emergency room visit, too. ER visits due to tramp accidents rose 113% between 1990-95 and 2000-05.

Disclaimer: Inkling would like to remind you that this is a humorous column. Any suggestion that being really really rich is the only way to stay healthy and happy in America is obviously a total joke; actually it’s a malicious lie propagated by the goddamn Liberals. 

The stereotype of gabby women and reticent men can be thrown out the window, along with unfounded claims to the contrary by pop psychiatrist Louann Brizendine. 

A recent study, inspired by Brizendine’s groundless claim that “a woman uses about 20,000 words a day, while a man uses only about 7,000” has found that both sexes use around 16,000 words a day.

“These findings have been reported widely by national media and have entered the cultural mainstream,” said James W. Pennebaker, a psychologist at the University of Texas, and study co-author. “There is no large-scale study that systematically has recorded the natural conversations of large groups of people for extended period of time.”

With their work cut out for them, the team of psychologists spent eight years fine tuning a way to eavesdrop and record conversations until they come up with the electronically activated recorder (with the apt acronym EAR). This inconspicuous digital recorder tracks people’s interactions and conversations without the wearer knowing it.

Altogether they sampled and analyzed the yammering of 396 men and women over more than 12,000 days. They found that women spoke on average 16,215 words in a day and men a shade fewer at 15,669. But that difference was not statistically significant.

The final sentence of today’s Science paper leaves no room for further error: “We therefore conclude, on the basis of available empirical evidence, that the widespread and highly publicized stereotype about female talkativeness is unfounded,” the authors write. 

And now, a joke from the NYTimes by Donald McNeil Jr, which makes up for the fact that they were guilty of perpetuating Brizendine’s myth:

Man: Study here says women talk twice as much as men.

Wife: Of course we do. We have to repeat everything we say.

Man: What?

Perfectly crisping bacon doesn’t take skill, it takes science. Spreading pizza toppings isn’t art, it’s “topping exposure percentage and topping distribution evenness” detected by computer vision. Chocolate mousse isn’t heaven, it’s a matrix “gelled by hydrocolloids in the continuous phase.”

That seemingly inimitable blend of flavor, texture, and aroma can be broken down into numbers and computations and you better not forget it.

8,000-10,000: years ago that man first milked animals.

237,928,359: the number of dairy cows mooing along today.

40-50: the percentage of air in ice cream.

117: The liters of milk consumed per capita in Finland in 2005. Also, the highest in the world that year.

3.7: the percentage of fat in cow’s milk

6-9: the percentage of fat in ice cream.

2.5: the percentage of fat in camel milk ice cream.

3: the number of flavors that camel milk ice cream comes in: strawberry, caramel, and chocolate.

170: the temperature in Celsius that sugar starts to caramelize.

210: the temperature in Celsius where sugar goes from being “dark caramel” to “black jack” AKA pure carbon.

14: the number of steps identified in the caramelization process.

1912: the year Louis Camille Maillard started studying non-enzymatic browning. This process, dubbed the Maillard reaction makes toast from bread.

60: the temperature (in Celsius) at which the starch granules in bread re-gelatinize, which makes stale bread less so.

1928: the year that Otto Frederick Rohwedder’s bread slicing machine was introduced to America.

80: the percentage of proteins in wheat that are gluten.

15: the age in days of Uruguayan white pan bread where it experiences a 50% consumer rejection rate due to “sensory variables” AKA funky smell. 

In 1941, a Nobel laureate named James Chadwick got his hands on documents that described how to build a nuclear reactor written by his colleagues. Like any good scientist he sent them off to the Royal Society in London. But instead of submitting them for publication, Chadwick urged that they be kept under wraps. The papers, forgotten and lost over time, were found in the institution’s archives last January during an audit. This month, a CERN particle physicist named Brian Cox opened them for the first time.

The Chadwick papers, as they came to be known, are a laundry list of sensitive atomic science, which include directions on how to safely conduct a nuclear chain reaction and how to get plutonium from uranium. (That’s pretty much one step away from making a bomb, hence the present-day brouhaha over Iran’s nuclear reactors). They also shed light on a bygone era of cloak-and-dagger science. “I can see why these papers were locked away during the war,” Cox said. “They contain details that could be used to build a nuclear reactor.”

James Chadwick discovered the neutron 75 years ago – a find that earned him a Nobel prize and kick-started modern day particle physics. Chadwick was a physics professor at the University of Liverpool at the war’s start but was quickly recruited to help the Brits build an A-bomb. Chadwick’s French colleagues across the Channel understood the neutron’s potential, and devised a means of generating nuclear energy, inventing what we now know as nuclear fission. It didn’t take long before nuclear fission’s far more sinister use – atomic bombs – came to light.

Seven years after Chadwick’s discovery, the Second World War began and a dark cloud descended over Europe. By 1940 the Nazis were in France, where Chadwick and his French colleagues, Hans Von Halban and Lew Kowarski, were painfully aware that their research could be used to build a bomb of unimaginable power.

They hastily typed up their work and, with the help of French agents and British intelligence, shipped themselves, their papers and their entire stockpile of heavy water (used to slow down neutrons in a reactor) over to Falmouth, England, right under the Germans’ noses. Chadwick, aware that even in Britain loose lips could sink ships, sealed the documents and sent them straight to the Royal Society in London with the advice that they were “inadvisable to publish at the present time.”

Von Halban and Kowarski were sent to Canada to develop a nuclear weapon – the British equivalent of the U.S.’s Manhattan project that developed the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The papers remained at the Royal Society, unopened.

That is, until June 1st 2007, when retired pop-star and professional particle-physicist Brian Cox peeled open the papers at the Royal Society in London. The sight of the D:Ream keyboardist (whom you may or may not remember from the 1990s pop scene) – poring over the yellowed typescript made me nostalgic for the science of yesteryear. Gone are the cloak-and-dagger stories, the smuggling, the ominous echoes of bootsteps on a train platform, the furtive Channel crossings. Now, at Cox’s current project, the Large Hadron Collider, it’s all about collaboration, publishing, grant money and outreach.

But Raiders of the Lost Ark fantasies aside, there were downsides to science being recruited in the war effort. The war sent the world of particle physics in the direction of destruction rather than energy production, and arguably prevented France from being the first to invent practical nuclear fission.

Today, with the completion of the LHC, 75 years after Chadwick’s discovery, we are about to enter a new era of particle physics and venture even farther into the unknown. As I watched Cox pore over Chadwick’s aged writings, I wondered what secrets we might read about in another 75 years.

You might have thought this “Your Health” topic was already covered when Anna posted the Your Health This (Obvi) Week. But see, there are just so many headlines out there that are begging to be made fun of for being so darn self evident. Here are a few. May they hearten your common sense.

People retire and get lazy. A recent study from the American Journal of Epidemiology reports that retirees are three times more likely than working adults to have a decline in “work-related” physical activity. The bad part is the retirees didn’t compensate for their increased vegetativeness. But who can blame them?

Highways drive city populations away. That’s right. City dwellers use said highways to leave the city behind, to the tune of an 18% reduction in city populations across the U.S. Without roads, the nation’s city populations would have grown by about 8% instead, presumably because none of the disaffected teenagers could find their way out. Or so concludes Brown university economist Nathaniel Baum-Snow in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Wide Disparities in Health Care Across the U.S. , a state scorecard reports. Oh yes that’s right. No joke. One of the report’s bullet points goes like this: “States vary widely in their health care performance and this means there is lots of potential for the nation overall to improve.” When health care spending outstrips economic growth and 46 million Americans don’t have health insurance there isn’t “potential” to improve, there’s an acute need.

Back in 2003 the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education decreed that interns couldn’t work more than 80 hours per week. Why? Because sleep deprivation increased their risk of crashing their car or making grave errors on the job. Keep in mind, these so-called curbed hours still work out to a robustly workaholic 11.4 hours per day, every day. But more (relatively) humane work conditions for medical residents create more humane conditions for their patients. With the (somewhat) shorter hours residents work, fewer patients get sent to intensive care and fewer patients get mistakes in their prescriptions, according to a Yale School of Medicine study in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Because if your doctor’s going to touch you there, a limp cold handshake just won’t do… Patients Want To Shake Hands With Their Physicians, Survey Finds. As opposed to those who prefer a song and dance.

Late weekend sleep among teens may lead to poor academic performance. Teenagers who stay up late on school nights and make up for it by sleeping late on weekends are more likely to perform poorly in the classroom. Which is ironic cause that was me in a nutshell and I did okay. Bet you readers did too.

This one’s a doozie too. “If your teenage son or daughter starts having mood swings, and stays out late, then it could very well be a sign that your kid is in love.” You can also tell if this is the case by such physiological changes as “sweaty palms, pounding hearts, and increased and excessive energy when they were around their beloved.” God. High-school palms were SO gross and sweaty.

Disclaimer: Your Health This Week may contain inaccuracies, errors, omissions and in a few rare cases outright fabrications, especially in the disclaimer. This is normal, and adjusting your screen or wireless connection will not make it better. Except for errors in this week’s This Week, which Anna typed with sweaty palms, pounding heart, and increased and excessive energy.

Scientists have soundly criticized pop science book The Female Brain and its author, Louann Brizendine, Director of the Women’s Mood & Hormone Clinic at UCSF, for her errors and scientific misrepresentations. Psychoneuroindoctrinology, a cleverly titled review in Nature, said it “disappointingly fails to meet even the most basic standards of scientific accuracy and balance. The book is riddled with scientific errors and is misleading about the processes of brain development, the neuroendocrine system, and the nature of sex differences in general.” Yet, with this book, Brizendine has parlayed her academic stature into that of a high-profile pop psychiatrist - a post it appears she will be at for a long time to come.

Brizendine is becoming famous for her incorrect claims. Her gabbiness theory on the number of words women use per day was trashed by linguists in the Boston Globe and elsewhere (she won a Becky Award for “the single most ridiculous or misleading bit of linguistic nonsense that somebody manages to put over in the media”), but she persists.

In a New York Times Magazine article Deborah Soloman confronted Brizendine on her “gabbiness” theory. The dialog went like this:

NYT: Your book cites a study claiming that women use about 20,000 words a day, while men use about 7,000.

Louann Brizendine: The real phraseology of that should have been that a woman has many more communication events a day—gestures, words, raising of your eyebrows.

Oh, okay, that clears up everything. Yet the book continues to be referenced and sourced. Just last February, Elle published the women-use-20,000-words canard. It goes on and on.-

Here’s a sample quote from The Female Brain, which I’ll proceed to tear apart shortly: “Connecting through talking activates the pleasure centres in a girl’s brain. Sharing secrets that have romantic and sexual implications activates those centres even more. [References for that? Of course not…] We’re not talking about a small amount of pleasure. This is huge. It’s a major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of an orgasm.”

Fact: oxytocin secretion in the brain isn’t triggered by speech alone. Fact: oxytocin, a.k.a. “the cuddle hormone” is only secreted in response to reproductive functions (think: sex, childbirth and breastfeeding). Despite what the marketers of the snake oil Liquid Trust would have you believe (perhaps Brizendine could do a testimonial), ambient scent in a social group and/or spraying yourself with a light mist of oxytocin will not do the trick.

Researcher Paul Zak, from Claremont Graduate University’s Center for Neuroeconomics, studied connections between oxytocin and trust and debunked “trust spray”, saying it’s “totally bogus” to sniff it from someone’s collar. You’d need to snort about three teaspoonfuls nasally (to cross the blood brain barrier) for any effect. Ironically, Brizendine does mention this study. Just in a different chapter.

So oxytocin is not wafting between chatty schoolgirls, nor is it spread via text messages or instant messenger. Research-article databases like PubMed and Google Scholar turn up nothing at all about a connection between oxytocin and speech or language (aside from autism) in humans.

Research on oxytocin and its links to autism suggests that increasing oxytocin levels (administered intravenously or with a nasal spray) may improve social cognition. There’s no doubt that oxytocin plays an important role in social bonding, for women and men alike. But is it what motivates young girls to talk to each other? Supposedly twice as much, twice as fast and via technology?

Mmmm… No.

Brizendine is working on a new book titled The Male Brain. That’ll be one to watch. I suspect it’ll be about how men think of nothing but sex and beer, and get an oxytocin release from porn on the internet.

I love video games and I love cooking. So when Cooking Mama for the Nintendo DS handheld—a video game about cooking—arrived last September, I beat it within a week. The only reason it took so long was because of, you know, sleep and the need to eat real food. Which is ironic, because it wasn’t long before I brought Cooking Mama recipes and skills into my own kitchen, turning my Nintendo DS into a virtual Joy of Cooking.

When Cooking Mama debuted in May 2006 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), four months before its release, it got sparkling praise from both industry professionals and fans. More than 244,000 copies have sold in the U.S. since its release, according to NPD, a marketing-research firm that tracks game sales. Leading gaming website IGN called it Most Innovative DS Design of E3 2006. The clamor for Mama even helped its publisher, Majesco, nearly quintuple its revenues in 2006, raking in $21.5 million.

In Cooking Mama, you are an apprentice cook under the watchful eye of ace chef Mama herself. Each time she throws a recipe your way, you slide, tap and spin the stylus on the screen in order to slice, chop, mix, mince, grate, knead, etc. (For the skeptical, there’s a video of the game in action here.) For example, in order to mix ingredients, put your stylus in the middle of the bowl and start spinning. Mama offers advice on the direction of your mixing strokes. If you perform perfectly and on time, you get a gold medal. Make a couple mistakes and you get a silver. Make more, and you get a bronze, along with a fiery look from Mama.

According to Office Create, the Japanese developers’ inspiration for the game was taking the typical situation of a mother cooking at home with the help of her child and turning it into a game. Or at least that’s the impression I got using their description and my newbie Japanese reading skills.

When Cooking Mama Gets Real

Cooking Mama starts you off with 15 recipes to learn and play with. As your slicing and dicing improves, you can unlock more of Mama’s cooking secrets for a total of 76 recipes, from instant ramen to cabbage rolls, all adapted from real Japanese and American recipes. I am not the biggest foodie in the world and Giada De Laurentis I am not. But as I was playing, a spark went off: I could use these recipes in real life!

IGN reviewer Craig Harris disagrees. “It might have the side effect of giving you the idea of how particular meals are prepared, but it’s doubtful that you can apply any skills learned in Cooking Mama to real world cooking.” I sought to prove him wrong. Raiding ingredients from my own mama’s kitchen for a little experiment, I decided to pit Cooking Mama’s Japanese style potato salad recipe against an old standby, Masaki Ko’s Japanese Kitchen.

It’s on. Mama orders me to peel five carrots in 30 seconds. Next, she wants me to chop them into crescent wedges. Then boil them with some potatoes, a process that Mama breaks down into seven idiot-proof steps. I cheat in parts (when Mama asks me to peel a potato while hot, I burn my hand and drop it; so I just use tongs. Genius!). Next, Mama walks me through some specific cutting instructions (potatoes into wedges, diagonally sliced cucumbers into thin circles) and because it’s Japanese style potato salad, I use a Japanese mayo, which is sweeter and thinner than regular American mayo.

A lot of transferring Cooking Mama’s recipe into reality was pretty standard guesswork, like deciding how long to cook the potatoes and carrots (it takes significantly longer than the 15 seconds in the game).

And The Winner Is...

The biggest gripe I had about the real life recipe? Uh, none. The Japanese Cookbook recipe turned out pretty well and it’s difficult to mess up since each step is meticulously outlined for you.

But what about the taste? Mama’s recipe was much simpler, but the Japanese mayo I used, which (I assume) Mama also uses, made the salad taste much sweeter, and each veggie’s flavor and texture stood out. The flavors from the cookbook recipe were more unified as most of the veggies were cooked together in stock, rice vinegar and sugar. Both certainly tasted the way I thought a chilled potato salad should taste. I can’t really say one is better than the other because both were equally yummy. It would just come down to what kind of potato salad mood I was in.

The most fun discovery I had with this small experiment was it made Cooking Mama a virtual recipe book for me. Yeah, there’s some guesswork involved, but the recipes can be followed through each step. Little children aspiring to be a famous chef or just like mom (or dad) in the kitchen no longer need to start with Play-Doh and a plastic kitchen. Just give them their very own Cooking Mama.

This special edition of Your Health This Week is brought to you by the seven deadly sins - and some of the less deadly ones as well.

Wrath can cause breathing troubles. In a study of 4,629 U.S. urban men and women, bad tempers were associated with impaired lung function. Must be the strain of all that huffing and puffing.

Cigarette smoking, the 8th deadly sin, is so very very bad that its evils are actually revisited upon the sons. Smoking damages DNA in sperm cells, meaning mutations are passed along the fatherly line. That’s what I call eternal damnation.

And if those sons pick up the habit by age 14, they are four times more likely to commit suicide by the age of 34. For the record, that’s fixing the 8th deadly sin by breaking the 6th commandment.

Gluttony is bad, sure, but who is to say that half a bottle of wine a day is evil when it can actually help you think sharper than teetotalers? Makes you glad that alcohol never made it onto the infamous list.

Speaking of gluttony, a study of experimental TV watchers found that the more entertaining the show, the more potato chips you’ll eat. And yes, TV is the 9th deadly sin.

Most guns in homes with young children are not properly secured. That’s right, 70% of parents surveyed in Canada, the U.S. and Puerto Rico said their guns weren’t adequately locked up. Do they think that THEIR children aren’t stupid enough to play with firearms? If that ain’t Pride, I don’t know what is. And pride can kill.

Parents lusting after a future in professional sports for their kids may be doing serious harm. The American Association of Pediatrics has issued new warnings aimed to decrease the number of kids burned out by overtraining.

Shark cartilage has been shown to do absolutely nothing to cure lung cancer. Whether this study will cure shark cartilage devotees of the 10th deadly sin - abject stupidity - is left to be seen.

So lustful you end up having sex in your sleep? Sucks to be you, I guess, but at least now the doctors will believe you have a genuine sleep disorder and aren’t just a pervy bastard.

Greedy Washington, D.C., hospitals are more likely to admit white kids from the ER, compared to blacks or hispanics. The difference generally comes from admitting kids who actually don’t need hospitalization, likely due to the combined pressure of overly zealous parents and opportunistic hospital admins.

Oh and sloth is bad. Really bad. Exercise is good. Especially just after dinner.

Disclaimer: Taking Your Health This Week seriously is actually the 143rd deadly sin. You have to read your Old Testament pretty carefully, but it’s in there.  (In the fine print, of course.)

Aspirin is what you might call nature’s little wonder drug. It relieves pain, lowers fevers, fights heart disease and strokes, and now seems to prevent colon cancer. All that from tree bark. Sure it might cause you to bleed profusely from the gut, but it’s still one of the most trusted and widely used medicines in human history.

Acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) is derived from salicylic acid, a compound found naturally in the bark of the willow tree. Its use dates back as far as the fifth century BC, when Hippocrates himself wrote about a powder from willow bark that remedied pain and lowered fever. It was used in its natural, woody format for centuries until the 1880s, when a handful of European chemists synthesized ASA in the lab. German company Bayer finally trademarked the drug in 1899 (they lost the trademark in the economic shakeup after World War I, but bought the company that owned it in 1994).

Since its first commercial production, aspirin has remained a popular medicine for all sorts of common aches and illnesses. But the full extent of its healing powers has only been uncovered in recent years. Taken regularly, the little white pill enhances bloodflow by reducing the “stickiness” of platelets and assists arteries in remaining open, which helps to keep heart attacks and strokes at bay. Aspirin has also been touted as reducing cancer risks.

The humongous Harvard-based Nurses’ Health Study, which covers 30 years and almost 80,000 participants, found this March that women on low doses of aspirin (81-milligram “baby aspirin”) were less likely to die from heart disease, stroke or colon cancer. On the flip side, women who consumed high doses – more than 14 adult tablets (325 milligrams each) per week – didn’t receive health benefits, and were more likely to die from strokes.

On the other hand, a May study combining results from more than 7500 people found that only an adult dose of daily aspirin can lessen colon cancer risk. An Oxford University study led by Peter Rothwell found that taking 300 milligrams of aspirin every day for five years diminishes the risk of colon cancer by an astounding 74% over the following 10–15 years among both men and women.

Yet most people don’t consume that much aspirin – not because of any clinical findings but because it can lead to painful stomach bleeding. The FDA officially warned the public about this side-effect years ago.  A large review published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May found that thousands of Americans are likely sent to the ER needlessly each year for stomach bleeding and that doses higher than 75 to 81 milligrams do not improve cardiovascular health.

So if colon cancer runs in your family (or you have an overwhelming need to eat vast quantities of red meat), you might bother considering the daily adult dose. For everyone else, it seems baby is best.

Most of Michelle Perchonok’s colleagues at NASA are concerned with getting people to Mars. But foremost on Perchonok’s mind is a far more cardinal concern: what on Earth to feed them. Whatever it is, food for the Red Planet will need to be nutritious, resistant to solar radiation and still edible after up to five years in storage. Perchonok would like to build in a degree of scrumptiousness, too.

“The frontier of space food is trying to come up with a food system to support a Mars mission,” says Vickie Kloeris, the Johnson Space Center’s manager of Space Food Systems. What with a six-month journey to get out there and back, plus at least an 18-month stay on Mars, the shelf-life target for Mars food is five years. By comparison, chow on the International Space Station is past its prime after 18 months. “It’s our biggest challenge right now,” says Kloeris.

“We’re limited to the packaged food system in transit,” explains Perchonok, who heads up the Advanced Food Technology Project at the Johnson Space Center. Once installed on Mars, astronauts may supplement their foiled food packets with some hydroponic (or “bioregenerative”) veggies.

The mission to Mars could launch as early as 2024. That doesn’t leave too much time for testing a recipe’s five-year staying power. So Perchonok is using accelerated shelf-life tests to see which of 13 International Space Station menu items last the longest. She stores thermostabilized food packages at three different temperatures (40, 72 and 95 degrees F) in machines that resemble refrigerators. The warmer the temperature, the more accelerated its shelf-life test. Every four months or so she feeds some of the aged dishes to volunteer taste-testers recruited from the Johnson Space Center’s workforce. 

The results? Rhubarb applesauce just passed the 24-month mark with flying colors. So far thermostabilized bread pudding, apricot cobbler and grilled pork chops are the only menu items known to age for five years and still taste good. Still, that doesn’t leave much room for day-to-day variety on the menu.

So the Advanced Food Technology Project is also accelerating the shelf lives of three bulk ingredients, which may give astronauts with culinary inclinations the chance to get creative. First is cornstarch for thickening Martian gravies and gumbos, followed by dried egg whites for baking (we’re thinking a nice meringue would be out of this world). And last but not least is cocoa because, as Perchonok concedes, “you wouldn’t want to be without chocolate for three years.”

In this edition of Your Health, we explore pediatrician quackery, bullying bosses, and the tragic legacy of the World Trade Center dust.

A whopping 17 percent of all doctors claiming to be pediatricians aren’t certified by the American Board of Pediatrics.

Employees in the US are 50% more likely to be bullied in the workplace compared to people in Scandinavia. What’s more, the Americans don’t even know they are being bullied, saying its just the office culture in their country. Pair that with the 5 weeks standard holiday and I am thinking we should all start working in Europe.

Antibodies taken from the blood of people who survived infection with the lethal strain of bird flu H5N1 may be able to prevent and treat the disease in others (okay just mice at the moment, but hey....). The evil effects of viruses are turned around and used to kill them...dum dum dummm.

We all know that a high fat diet is evil. But did you know that it will make you more likely to die from the hyperthermia when taking ecstasy. So THAT’S why they only hand out fresh fruit at raves.

MRSA superbugs, once confined to hospitals, are spreading their evil wider throughout the community - especially in prisons and poor, crowded neighborhoods. Super evil, I tell you.

The Axis of Evil is now responsible for giving rare blood cancers to survivors of the World Trade Center disaster. Doctors fear these long latency diseases might start appearing in many people exposed to the toxic dust from the WTC collapse.

I’ve always thought that peanut butter was corrupt and malicious - why else could such a seemingly benign sandwich spread hold the power to kill me just a teaspoon of it’s nutty power? Now that peanut butter and salmonella bacteria have joined forces, the results have been dreadful for all.

I once lived with an environmental researcher who was quick to enlighten me about my poisonous laundry-washing practices. “I use only half the recommended dose of washing powder, because that’s enough,” she explained. “And no fabric softener, because that’s bad for the environment.” “Yeah, of course, ooh, bad for nature,” I mumbled, vaguely remembering those nineties ads that sang the praises of phosphate-free, environment-friendly washing liquids. Getting us consumers to change our conservative laundry habits is no easy task.

Let’s imagine, then, what it would take to banish detergents altogether in favor of eco balls – green, Saturn-shaped plastic balls that claim to replace both washing powder and fabric softener and are effective even when used in cold, short wash cycles.

First off, there’s the name. These objects do have a spherical shape, so the most mature amongst our readers shall certainly not poke fun at such a straightforward christening. Luckily though, they come not in pairs, but in sets of three. Also, the small and friendly size of the balls makes a compelling argument: one ball fits in your palm, so no more lifting and carrying heavy packs and bulky bottles from the supermarket!

Then, there’s the sheer weirdness of entirely eradicating washing powders in favor of such an intangible washing concept. “The balls are made of a special kind of plastic,” explains Steve Jones, the founder of Ecotopia, which sells a variety of washing balls he believes are top of their league, and a scientific breakthrough. “It is the chemical reaction between the plastic and the agitated water that actually does the washing,” he says. The product’s blurb says the balls “produce ionized oxygen that activates the water molecules naturally and allows them to penetrate deep into clothing fibers to lift dirt away.”

Right. Let’s go back to washing basics. Our machine works by combining three actions. First comes chemical action. Here, detergents act as surfactants: they lower the water’s surface tension, making it more likely to mix with oil, so that yucky grease and grime can be removed during rinsing. Second comes the mechanical action from the spinning of the washing machine drum. And finally, there is heat action, which consists of dunking your laundry in hot water.

The eco balls mostly increase the mechanical action so that you can do without the chemical action, thereby saving money and avoiding the use of evil pollutants. The increase of mechanical action also does away with the need for heat action, which in turn conserves electricity and water, which is good for your wallet and your planet.

This seems pretty straightforward. But then, would putting golf or tennis balls into my machine drum not do the trick? Some manufacturers actually produce such simple washing balls, which they claim allow you to halve the quantity of detergent used. Eco balls replace washing powder completely. They are filled with pellets that contain non-evil surfactants, as well as agents that soften the water and give it a slight fragrance. They seem to really wash, as well as kill bacteria, and unlike chemical detergents, cause no allergies or eczema, and preserve brightly colored fabrics.

There is a little snag. Jones admits: “Modern detergents usually contain chemical stain removers and bleach. The eco balls don’t, so white fabrics won’t come out sparkly clean.” The balls are thus sold with an eco-friendly stain remover. Also, eco-washed laundry does not have (what we have trained our nose to recognize as) that distinctive freshly cleaned smell. But some actually prefer it this way.

All in all, Jones is happy: the eco balls are one of Ecotopia’s best-selling products. They’re clever, convenient and economical in the long run – about a nickel per wash. Yet, he does not think eco balls will become the norm. “It’s difficult to change habits,” he says.

I for one believe such an aptly named product deserves our support. Ecotopia (and lots of other web retailers) gladly ship their washballs the world over. Go and buy them, and let Inkling know if eco balls are bold or bollocks.